A Twisted Alternative
by iMissNothing
Summary: A twisted, dark story about what could have happened if Sasuke killed Naruto in their final battle and began reforming the ninja world under his regime.
1. Chapter 1

A lone girl sits in a tiny room. It was sparsely furnished and held tell tale signs of decay. The walls were coated a dingy beige, the paint cracked and chipped in some places. Discoloured with water stains and yellowed along the edges that connected to scuffed moulding. The room itself was pathetically sparse. There were no signs of its occupants residence. No pictures or intimate possessions decorated the space. It was cold. Merely a means of shelter and nothing else. It lacked any visible personal comforts or luxuries. Furnished with only the bare minimum required to constitute a living space.

A lone wooden stool occupied one corner of the room. Perhaps the most extravagant commodity in the dwelling. Its purpose was largely unessecary and appeared visibly flimsy at a glance. It rested at an awkward angle, uneven legs a result of either poor craftsmanship or deterioration. A bulky sac rested atop the stool at a precarious tilt. The display was unnerving as the bag looked as though it would either topple over or the stool would simply collapse under the packs weight. Across from the rickety stool a visibly withered mattress lay haphazardly on the dirty floor. The makeshift bedding lacked a frame and was only covered by a ratty blanket. The lumpy mattress did not inspire comfort and silently promised a restless nights sleep. Not that silken sheets and feathered pillowing would allow its inhabitant a peaceful slumber.

She had not slept easily for some time now. Her nights were plagued by nightmarish images and inner turmoil. She felt constantly exhausted despite spending most of her days confined in the dingy room. She lounged around the small space, seemingly content to do nothing but let time pass. Existing within the walls of her haven, sheltered from the harsh reality that lay beyond her doorway.

That door was a barrier between her and the world that lie beyond it. She wanted no part of that world. She would often allow herself to starve for days on end before resigning herself to leave her dwelling in search of necessary provisions. A part of her simply wished to let herself starve to death. Allow her emaciated figure to wither away in the shelter she had created. Death seemed peaceful. Vindictively she hoped that there was no after life. That her soul would simply slip away into an eternal void of nothingness. A numbness that avoided her on Earth could be found in her death.

She had contemplated death. Ending it all often seemed like a favourable option from her tortured existence. However, the possibility of a spiritual realm tugged in the corners of her mind and quieted thoughts of suicide. Would it be the fabled paradise crafted in scriptures and religious doctrines? The thought evoked a semblance of comfort. Surely he would be there. At home amongst the ethereal rays of blinding light and inescapable warmth. He practically radiated it himself. He had. She liked to think of him there. Thriving in a Utopia that granted him all the luxuries and prosperity that had escaped him on Earth.

Would she be granted her own blissful infinity?

Or perhaps her actions on Earth would warrant her soul condemnation to perish in the fires of hell. Perhaps the higher powers that be would determine she deserved to be punished, and perhaps she did. An infinity of suffering to bleed penance for her sins. Her failures. Though she could hardly imagine a suffering that rivalled her current agony.

She sometimes wondered if she would be reunited with the souls of the departed? The people she had lost. That she had failed. What would they make of the husk of a human being she had become? Were they already aware of her miserable state? Had the after life allowed them means to gaze upon the souls of the living? Perhaps they walked amongst them. Like silent spectators unable to interact with the world they had left behind them. Forced to bare witness to the twisted state of things the living had constructed.

She sometimes wondered if he watched her. It was a comforting fantasy to imagine him next to her. The mere illusion of his presence brought her warmth as much as it did guilt and shame. He would be saddened by her current state, disgusted even. A pathetic shell of her former self. Drowning in misery and anger at the world around her. Silently begging for someone to end it all. How she wished she could simply end it herself.

But he would not have wanted that. Death by her own hand would be an insult to his memory and everything he had lived for. That he had died for. How could she arbitrarily toss away her own life when his had been snatched away far too soon. That thought alone motivated her to continue on. Hers could hardly be considered a meaningful existence. She was living without truly living, only forcing herself to accomplish the bare minimum. To stay alive for his sake. She owed him at least that much.

She would live out her days until fate decided her time was up. However, she felt herself incapable of anything more.

Thus when her ribs began to emerge beneath her pale skin and stabbing pains of hunger reached her stomach, she would muster the vestiges of her will power and cross through the barrier she had created. These brief departures from her sheltered quarters were always quick and efficient. A remote village existed along the outskirts of the forestry that surrounded her lodging. It was roughly a half days journey away but provided her a means of obtaining supplies. The tiny town was simplistic in nature and its residents were largely introverted. Her presence was tolerated amongst the villagers, despite being somewhat unusual. The tiny suburb seldom saw many travellers. It's location warranted an inconvenient detour from regularly traveled pathways, and had it little to offer in terms of trade. It's existence was relatively overlooked, if not unknown, by the common traveler passing through the area. It was perfect for her. She shuddered at the thought of encountering an individual from her past.

She loathed encountering anyone really. It had not always been so, she could recount a time where she revelled in the company of others. Extroverted and unabashedly buoyant, the girl had thrived amongst people. A stark contrast to the antisocial hermit she had become. The towns people normally kept to themselves, perhaps attracted by the isolated nature of the village. She in turn minded her own affairs. Conducting her business with as much discretion and limited interaction as she possibly could.

Her signature flamboyant loques were tucked beneath her hooded cloak. Dull green eyes were rooted to the ground beneath the soles of her feet. Avoiding eye contact with anyone she came across. The townsfolk granted her a familiar regard, accustomed to her occasional presence. Some would chatter in hushed tones as her figure passed. Speculating upon her identity and personal history. They would weave tales of her elusive past and craft presumptions that held no basis. She paid their idle gossip little mind. She reasoned it was a means of entertainment for them in their quiet, little town. Besides, the truth was far more radical than anything their imaginations could conjure up.

Swiftly she weaved through the isles of a familiar grocer's shop located in the heart of the tiny village. It's wares were limited and lacked variety. Exotic fruits and plantains seemingly unheard of. However she would have ignored them regardless. She only required the basics. Her meals were normally bland and tasteless. She took no pleasure in eating, merely shoving down whatever she could stomach in order to stay alive.

A heavy sack of rice and pickled vegetables normally sufficed. They were easy to store and relatively non-perishable. Protein she found she could acquire through hunting or fishing at a nearby lake. Making her way through the quaint shop she gathered other basic necessities, taking care to avoid the shelving she knew the packaged ramen noodles to be kept. The thought of the salt laden dish made her sick.

Eager to begin her journey back she headed to the shops counter at the front of the store. The shopkeeper was a gruff man who omitted any social pleasantries, simply grumbling out the total cost of her purchases. She rummaged through her bag to hand him the desired amount, silently appreciative of his lack of conversation. Handing over the coin she noted that her funds were once again beginning to dwindle.

Her way of life was relatively cost efficient, exempt from most materialistic luxuries. However, basic necessities such as toiletries and other items required finances. Admittedly she would be lying if she claimed her spending to be completely void of self indulgence. Perhaps it was her former masters training that was ingrained into her mentality, but she religiously made a point to stock herself with basic medicinal herbs. It was a foolish endeavour as she had isolated herself from anyone to heal with them. Furthermore she had long since considered herself retired as a healer. What good had the ability done her? Her healing abilities had failed to save the one she had loved the most. Useless.

Still against her logic common sense was over ruled by instinctual habit, and when she had the cash to spare she found herself splurging on the plants she had once dedicated herself to.

Despite her listless demeanour, her isolation from society had not granted her the ability to forego basic morality. The idea of stealing repulsed her and she had refused to consider it a possibility. Similarly the life of a ninja was quickly rejected. She had had enough of that world. The bloodshed and wickedness she had seen plagued her nightmares and haunted her thoughts. Being a ninja had brought her nothing but suffering. It took all that she had ever known and loved, drowned it in darkness and stained it with blood. Her hands were still drenched in that blood. In-between every digit, beneath every finger nail, flowing through the grooves of her palm. She could have spent the rest of her life trying to wash away the rusted crimson from her hands. Scrubbing futilely until her fingers ached and her skin was raw. But, she knew it would never be washed away.

However, in her life's typical fashion of cruel irony, she found the answer to her financial woes was through more bloodshed. Not human blood per say.

There was only one person who's blood she would gladly stain her hands with.

However, hunting animals in the surrounding forestry proved to be the best method for obtaining coin. Once every two months or so she would drag herself from her melancholic apathy, and set a variety of traps for the local wild life. Harvesting pelts and trimming the meat from their bones, she would venture into the small village once again in hopes of selling to the few merchants. She found her offerings were mostly well received by the shop owners. Quality goods such as meats and furs were of a limited supply. Local hunters were scarce and outsourced products came irregularly.

Packing her things from the grocer she grimaced at the idea of returning to the village so soon. Perhaps she would set the traps upon her return. Begrudgingly hoping to simply get the entire ordeal out of her way quickly, so she could once again be left alone in solitude.

She began lugging her purchases across the village with her head hung low and eyes glued to the ground. Vaguely aware of the surrounding villagers milling about. Making her way towards the trail leading back to her shabby dwelling, she made a point to keep a swift pace. Her tiny frame seeming strangely unencumbered by her heavy load. She had begun to near the towns perimeter when a shrill sound from her left side halted her steps.

She paused to briefly glance at the source of the sound, finding it to be a small child. The little boy was covered in dust and clutching his knee. Examining the wailing child she could see the beginnings of blood seeping from the wound beneath his hands. The scrape did not appear life threatening or serious from her trained medics eye. Nothing more than a common scrape gathered in the throes of adolescence.

She had been fully prepared to leave the boy and continue along her journey. His mother could easily tend to his wounds, perhaps give him a gentle chiding to be more careful.

However, when the little boy had looked up to meet her gaze with weepy eyes as blue as the ocean, she had been jolted. Those eyes were so like his. The tufts of blonde hair atop the boys head only added to image her mind had begun creating. The scrappy youth before her had been blessed with the same sunny features as him. It was difficult for her to not draw a comparison between the two. Those eyes jarred her most. Sparkling with tears as they gazed up at her she felt her gut clench and knees go weak.

She felt her body moving before her thoughts could register her intentions. Subconsciously drawn towards the child sniffling over his scrape, like a puppet being lead by invisible strings she came to kneel before him. Gently taking the boys hands into her own she set them aside to inspect his wound. Instinct taking hold of her she felt her fingertips come alive with a familiar buzzing chakra. The boy had since ceased his cries and now stared on in awe as she glided her glowing digits across his cut. His eyes widened dramatically as his skin began to heal itself beneath her cooling touch, baffled at the feat of magic displayed before him.

For Sakura the ability had come as naturally as breathing. Her healing chakra felt achingly familiar, accompanied by a refreshing rush as it pushed through the neglected ducts of her pathway. Making itself known in the humming green glow at her finger tips.

The moment had not lasted more than a second or two and soon Sakura was wiping away the blood with the sleeve of her shirt. All traces of any injury erased as though it hadn't even been there.

Gathering her own bearings she raised herself to stand before the speechless child. Subtly she scanned the area to see if anyone else had witnessed her healing the boys knee. It would not do to have herself be recognized as a ninja. Ninja were not regarded favourably these days. Most had taken to going underground, hiding their abilities and living off grid.

The ninja that did not, wore their headbands proudly and were generally the basis behind the flawed reputation for shinobi.

Ninja recognized by the state as shinobi were militant and brutal. An army that only answered to one leader and his word was law. God help anyone who said otherwise. The registered ninja became a tool of enforcement for a dictatorship spreading across the nation. Those ninja that opposed or refused to join their ranks were heralded as traitors and menaces to the general public. Many were imprisoned and many more executed.

In the beginning there had been multiple attempts of rebellion. The people fought against the new regime with fervour and the streets ran rampant with anarchy. They had fought and they had died. Underground movements were squashed beneath the hands of a mad man. Slaughtered in the name of peace. More began to join his ranks from being cowed into submission, finding it pointless to fight against his will. Others had shared his crazed vision for reformation and aligned themselves with him in a misguided venture for glory and world peace.

Sakura herself had bore witness that attempting to fight against this regime only lead to death. Yet, she would sooner die than join their ranks.

The rebellions had been one failure after another. They had suffered countless tragedies in fighting a losing battle. Ninja involved had been forced into hiding, leaving their villages and abandoning their titles. They had vowed to eventually regroup and return stronger than ever. But as time passed the prospect only became more hopeless.

Civilians now feared ninja, the militant police force had slandered the once honourable profession. Furthermore civilians feared the repercussions of harbouring an unregistered ninja in hiding. Failing to report an unregistered ninja or aiding them in any way was a punishable offence. Homes were raided and families were imprisoned on the grounds of mere association. The civilians were petrified of the turmoil ninjas brought and eventually rejected them entirely.

Should someone have seen her performing a healing jutsu there was a significant threat of it being reported. She trembled at the thought of being caught by the police force. Of being brought face to face with him. The thought of him twisted her guts in fear and sent hatred coursing through her very bones.

Suppressing the horrific implications, she quickly turned to gather her supplies and continue her track home. Satisfied no one else had witnessed her healing she began trekking towards the village''s exit once more, cursing her foolish impulses.

"Are you magic?" She heard a squeaky voice ask halting her steps once more.

Turning back to the small child she raised her hand and lifted her index finger to her lips. She let out a small hush accompanied by a mischievous wink, as though he was privy to a secret. And in a way he was. The boy appeared simply delighted at her gesture. He watched her once again depart, seemingly entranced by her figure walking out of the village. Almost as if he expected her to magically sprout wings and fly away.

She was fairly unconcerned whether or not he chose to mention their encounter to anyone else. A magic lady with healing hands sounded like a fanciful fib born from a childs imagination. She highly doubted anyone would take the tall sounding tale as truth. She decided to err on the side of caution however and avoid returning to the small village anytime soon.

The rest of the length of her journey she found her thoughts wandering back to the little boys blue eyes.

They had held so much life and radiance in their blue orbs, despite living in a world devoid of such.

She found herself contented by the sight. Almost as if a small piece of him still existed.

The thought brought a small smile to her lips and it felt strange on her features. She had not had a reason to smile for so long now.


	2. Chapter 2

She had awoken feeling tense that morning. Not the sort of tense that comes with sleeping in an awkward position the night prior. No, this was a strange pressure that made her muscles clench and joints rigid. She lay sprawled out across her tired mattress anxiously trying to will her body to relax. Her efforts however were in vain as her body seemed determined to be wound as tight as a coil. This only made her all the more uneasy.

Sakura liked to think that she had always had good instincts. On some level she felt as thought she were in tune with her surroundings. Picking up on something most tended to over look. As juvenile as it seemed, over time she had come to trust this feeling that lead her instincts. On more than one occasion this feeling had been unnervingly telling. She had this feeling one night when she was thirteen and she followed it towards the gates of Konoha. She had had this feeling during the war and it had brought her to Naruto, appearing to be on the brink of death. She could still recall the strange feeling of having her arm wedged into his chest cavity, her grip squeezing his heart rhythmically in an effort to restart the failed organ. Not many could claim to have held someone's life in their hands in quite so literal terms.

Finally, she had been shaken to her very core by this feeling after awakening from a vicious genjutsu.

Her eyes had fluttered open to the sight of pebbles littering the cracked stone surface where she lay, her vision blurred and unfocused. Her sense felt dulled and groggy, as was typical when emerging from under the spell of a genjutsu, especially one so potent. In a haze of confusion her mind attempted to process her current state. Only moments before she had been under the sickening impression that a Chidori had run her through. That she had met her end at the hands of the one she had cherished most. She had not expected to awaken unscathed, laying next to her former sensei in the centre of a crumbled battle field. She had not expected to awaken at all.

Gathering her wits she pushed herself upright off of the dusty ground, a hand to her temple hoping to ease the throbbing pressure that had accumulated in her frontal lobe.

Kakashi sat but a few feet from her form, looking as ragged and worn as she surely felt. Watching with silent regard as she collected herself. A pitying expression peeked through his visible features as he witnessed understanding flash across her own expression.

Sakura glanced around them briefly, her green eyes searching for two other bodies. Her brow furrowed when they remained absent from her gaze. Turning to face Kakashi she asked;

"Where are they?" Some part of her already knew the answer.

Kakashi only responded with silence, casting his eyes in another direction at her wide eyed stare. His face had struggled to suppress a grimace, but she saw it anyways.

The feeling had begun blooming in her chest. Accompanied by an unpleasant tugging sensation in her gut.

If her sensei's failure to answer had left her with any doubts, they were quickly quieted as a thunderous crack resounded in the distance. Followed by flashes of light and bursts of chakra that could be sensed even by a genin miles away.

The tugging in her stomach increased, and pulled her to seek out the source of the monstrous energies. With a small grunt she forced herself to stand on shaking limbs. Her body trembled and she nearly stumbled in the process before catching herself. Her sensei moved to reach out to support her feeble form before freezing at the glare she flashed him. Letting his arms come to rest at his side he allowed her to steady herself with the diminished vestiges of her own strength. Knowing that any further attempts at chivalry would be resented as coddling.

"Sakura... right now your not fit enough to-" He attempted to reason with her, before being cut off by his old student.

"I'm fine... They need me right now Kakashi."

The absence of her affectionate referral to him as 'sensei' spoke of the seriousness of her resolve. It would have been pointless to attempt to stop her. And right now Kakashi couldn't help but agree that she may be right. They did need her. Perhaps more than they knew.

She was determined not to be left on the sidelines once more, and with that in mind she began to head in the direction of the sounds of battle echoing in the distance.

The feeling grew stronger with every step she took towards the now infamous valley, her heartbeat pounding in her ear drums.

How twisted it was that such a beautiful place set the scene for something so horrific.

Making their way to the sight she had let her thoughts remain naively optimistic. Fighting the uneasiness she felt, she reasoned that surely Naruto would bring Sasuke back into the light. Make the lost boy see reason. He had an incomprehensible ability to drag out the best in people. The sunny disposition, untainted morality and unbreakable will power of the boy had inspired change in friend and foe alike. The laws of the universe simply demanded a positive outcome, after all the suffering that had lead up to this moment.

She had been so stupidly naive. The universe was cruel and uncaring of what was fair. What was inherently right.

Kakashi had seen them first. Below him two minuscule figures appeared to be kneeling on a fallen chunk of rock face in the centre of what remained of the valley. From a distance the men seemed to be facing one another, slightly slumped over against the other for support after being drained from battle. That is what she had thought.

Leaping past her former sensei, who remained rooted to the ledge above of the newly destroyed trench, she began to navigate the rocky downhill terrain.

"Oh my god." Kakashi had softly gasped, realizing all too soon that only a single chakra signature was coming from the two males below. "Sakura! No! Wait!" The man tried to choke out, but his cries fell upon deaf ears.

Hopping from stone to stone she made her way down the side of the trench, oblivious to the sinister reality of what she was witnessing. She ignored that twisting feeling in her gut, far too elated seeing her boys upright and locked together in a sort of awkward embrace. She naively hoped that this would be the long awaited moment for Team 7 to finally reunite with one another.

How very wrong she was.

As she approached she was able to make out Sasuke's features learning over Naruto's shoulder. The blondes back still facing her.

"Naruto! Sasuke-kun!" She called out to the two figures. A smile lit up her features and happy tears had begun to build in the corners of her eyes.

Her smile faltered when neither boy responded. Naruto hadn't even bothered to turn around. The sickening feeling began to creep up once more, no longer willing to be ignored.

She grew closer to the pair and became even more uneasy when she was able to discern the expression on Sasuke's feature.

He looked positively shaken. His eyes were almost comically wide, but failed to evoke any amusement when paired with a furrowed brow and clenched teeth.

The closer she came the more certain she was that something was very wrong.

She was now near enough to see Sasuke's chattering teeth and splotchy skin. She was close enough to gaze into his dilated pupils frantically darting from one direction to the next. Not even truly registering the presence of the girl only 3 feet away.

Sakura was close enough to them now to see that Naruto was not breathing.

She felt an overwhelming wave nausea grip her. Her vision blurred at the edges and her knees shook like a newborn fawn. She felt as though she would pass out then and there. Perhaps she would awaken to find that everything had been a horrible dream. Perhaps she was still caught in a particularly wicked genjutsu.

Gasping for a breath that did not seem to come to her she managed to sputter out in her daze;

"...S-Sasuke..." Another gasp for air to fill her lungs. "...W-what have you d-done?"

Her voice seemed to awaken the Uchiha from his catatonic state and his eyes snapped towards the horrified expression of the girl.

"...Sakura." He shakily breathed out. He looked confused for a moment as though he was unsure if she was really there. Her presence merely an illusion conceited by his shattered psyche.

The two ninja stared at each other a moment, neither one seeming able to breathe in the tense atmosphere.

Internally her mind screamed at her. Rejecting the reality laid out before her. She was convinced that she was trapped in a vicious nightmare, birthed from her deepest fears.

The moment was broken between the two as Sasuke began to move, and a large squelching sound seemed deafening as it rang in her ears.

She was paralyzed with sheer shock and horror as she watched the man she had once claimed to love unconditionally pull his fore arm from the chest cavity of the figure slumped against him. Letting the body slump backwards lifelessly before hitting against the ground with a sickening empty thud.

The gruesome scene still haunted her nightmares to this day.

Naruto's body lay motionless and devoid of any signs of life. His blue eyes were lost to her by the clouded glaze corpses tended to develop after time. His once tanned, golden skin was a strange shade of grey and tinted more pale than she had ever seen it before.

A gaping hole had torn through his chest. The sight of seared, charred flesh and mangled organs within it would make even the most composed of individuals cringe in revulsion.

The fatal wounds creator hung limply at Sasukes side. Fragments of bone shards clung to the limb, seemingly glued in place by the dead mans blood. The arm was drenched in rouge. Blood coated over pale skin at varying consistencies. In some places it was a darkened rust colour, cracked and flaking away the limb swayed lightly with the heaves of breath emitting from its owner. It left Sakura wondering for exactly how long had he remained with his arm embedded in his best friends carcass.

Sakura remained petrified by the discovery. Her broken mind refusing to cope with realities. As if her brain was firmly rooted in denial and unable to come to terms with what her gaping eyes attempted to show it. Coming to terms with the scene before her seemed unfathomable, like being locked in a twisted delusion birthed from the pits of her own personal hell.

Her ears registered an awful sound ripping through the air, but she did not realize that it was coming from her. She was unaware of the agonizing screeching that scrapped her vocal cords raw. She was not conscious of her legs wrenching her form towards the lifeless figure on the ground, throwing her tiny body over the dead boy and scratching her knee caps with the unabandoned force behind her movements.

She held no recollection of how she had come to be cradling Naruto's body, soaking herself in his blood and wailing throughout the walls of the ravine. Her first moments of lucidity came when she had sensed a movement next to her.

Sasuke had brought himself to hover over the two tragic figures. Staring down at Naruto clenched in Sakura's embrace. His features were apathetic but his eyes looked lost. Like a child perplexed by the sight before him. Unable to fully comprehend the ramifications of the suffering his actions had caused.

Her fear of having this monster so close to her was outweighed by a malicious rage. How dare he approach them. How dare he seem so stoic in the face of his wickedness.

Her anger reached new heights as she watched him raise that damnable limb to reach towards the deceased boys figure.

Two bloody fingers reached towards the blondes brow, as if to poke it, in a strange misguided gesture.

She would not let this monster lay another finger on Naruto and slapped the offending appendage away with all her strength.

"GET AWAY FROM HIM! YOU- YOU DON'T TOUCH HIM!" She screeched at the Uchiha, who looked surprised at her aggression.

The twisted dark haired boy had had the audacity to appear confused by her hatred, tilting his head in a manner that appeared aggravatingly innocent in its nature.

Sasuke stared at her a moment, seeing her without seeing her in a sense. He appeared unperturbed by her detest for him and oblivious of circumstance.

"Sakura.." He mumbled quietly. To her horror he began raising his hand in an identical manner towards her own fore head. Ignoring the terror and disgust marring her features.

"STAY AWAY FROM ME!" She lashed out at him, halting his movement with her screams. She frantically kicked the soles of her feet against the ground in an effort to drag her and Naruto's body away from their former teammate. Her scrambling to distance herself from his touch seemed to awaken something in him and a twisted clarity flashed in his eyes.

Clarity soon gave way to madness and a sickening smile began to bloom from the corners of his mouth. Sakura could only watch the insanity take hold of him.

"I've finally done it..." He said in a tone barley above a whisper. A strangled chuckle seemed to spurt from the Uchiha.

"I've finally cut all the bonds...heh." This time an eery giggle followed his statement. The giggle soon morphed into a disturbing cackle and not long after the Uchiha was hollering with unabashed laughter. As though someone had told the worlds funniest joke only he was privy too. The barks of laughter were twisted and unsettling. He was keeled over and laughing like a mad man, Sakura had never feared a sound more in her entire life. His cackling was like a soundtrack from hell, brimming with insanity and terrifyingly unhinged.

The shrieks of laughter began to dissolve into desperate quaking and heaves for a breath of air. Tear began to wind down the mad mans deceptively beautiful features, and his eyes bled into a nightmarish red. Tomoe spinning like the devils pinwheel. His gasps became sobs and his sobs turned into screams.

Sakura was frozen, and clutching Naruto's corpse like a lifeline. As if the blonde would suddenly come back from the dead and slay the twisted creature before her.

Suddenly Sasukes screeching came to an abrupt halt, scaring the girl more than his cries of insanity had.

Tilting his head towards the sky he uttered the phrase that would soon damn them all.

"I alone can fix it all now. It's time to rebuild."

At his words the feeling within Sakura had never been stronger.

After the horrors of that day Sakura trusted this feeling with every fibre of her being, and simultaneously she feared it. This was a primal instinct tailored to alert her that something terrible was about to happen. Now sitting in her humble shack in the woods, she no longer felt safe within the faded walls of her haven. Some might say she had become paranoid in her solitude, and Sakura desperately wished they were right.

Her mind began attempting to frantically explain the possible reasoning behind this internal warning sign that had presently ignited her system. She considered that perhaps someone had seen her using medical ninjutsu to heal the boy from the small village. However this seemed to be illogical. It had been nearly three months since the incident and she had returned to the village once or twice since then. Nothing had appeared to be abnormal during her visits but she was hesitant to eliminate it as a possibility.

As her brain worked to conjure a logical explanation for her instincts spontaneous reaction, she curled her small form into itself beneath her shoddy blanket. She became all the more unnerved as she considered whether or not she should stay within the safety of her room or begin sprinting like a mad woman away from her little hut in the forest. The dilemma left her practically immobilized by fear. She could very well be a sitting duck letting an unknown threat tear down her walls as though she were a present lying there for it to unwrap with ease. However, if she reasoned that if she were to dash out of her shelter she ran the risk of being a fool that ran right into the face of danger.

Alternatively, she considered the not so unlikely possiblity that her mind had finally cracked beneath the weight of her grief. Perhaps she was now crazy. Perhaps she had been crazy for some time now. Maybe once this overwhelming paranoia had subsided she would enjoy being crazy.

However this paranoia reached a climactic crescendo when a sharp rapping came from the other side of her doorway. The sound jolted her with pure panic. The sound was unquestionably a knock upon her once undisturbed door. The only sound it had ever emitted prior had come from its creaking hinges at her use.

Who stood on the other side of it? It was practically impossible for a random individual to have stumbled across it. Her hide away was nestled deep within the forest and no logic human being would be met with any reason to explore so far into the wild territory. If some one had come across her cabin it was because they had intended to seek it out.

She was rattled by this intruder at her entrance. Practically assured that it was a squadron of operatives come to capture her. She had always known that being a kunoichi had doomed her from remaining undetected for long. She crouched herself in the furthest corner from the doorway and quickly scrambled to snatch the kunai she kept beneath her mattress while she slept. Another knock sounded striking fear into her with every tap against the old wood. Her hands that grasped the weapon shook and she willed herself to prepare for when the door would inevitably burst open and bring her face to face with an attacker.

"Hello?" A muffled voice called from behind the barrier. She was jarred by its tone and nearly dropped the knife in her surprise. She was startled by the squeaky pitch of the voice. It was clearly ladden with femininity and youth. It suggested that it emerged from a child.

This startling observation did little to soothe her nerves as ninja were not above trickery, in an attempt to deceive and disarm her. Still she wondered why they would not merely break down the flimsy door, instead bothering to lure her out.

"Hello? I'm looking for the magic lady! Is this where she lives?" The small voice called out once more.

She was perplexed by the request from the tiny voice. 'Magic lady?' she thought. The childish term only served to confuse her further. Perhaps this odd presence truly was that of a child. From the cracks beneath the door she could make out the shadows of small feet.

"Go away!" She barked out in hopes to send the pestering voice skittering away.

"Please I need to speak with her!" The voice pleaded. With a twinge of annoyance Sakura replied;

"There is no one like that here! Leave this place!"

However the high pitched pleas persisted.

"Please! It's important! I wouldn't have travelled all this way if it wasn't!" The voice cried. Frustrated with the persistent nagging Sakura shot across the room and irritably cracked open the door. A small girl of ten or eleven stood before her, looking ruffled and puffy eyed. Her simple shift was covered in mud stains and the odd twig was tangled in her curly loques of golden hair. Ignoring her maternal instincts to coddle the ragged looking child she gave the tiny figure a stern glare. She would send the annoying youth on her way back to where she came, the softer part of her resigning to silently accompanying her journey from the shadows to ensure the girl returned safely.

"These woods are no place for a child! You're parents won't be pleased to find you here!" She grated irritably at the girl. Hoping to scare her off with the fear of invoking the wrath of parental authority.

"Are you her? The magic lady?" The child questioned peering up at Sakura with wide eyes, ignorant of her threat.

"I don't know what you have been told but you are very mistaken." Moving to close the door, Sakura was stopped by a tiny hand that wedged itself in between the door and its frame. The girl appeared frantic and flustered with wide eyes full of tears she began to beg beneath the pink haired woman stern gaze.

"Please! You have to help me! My brother told me about you! He said you can do magic! That you can heal people with it!" The girl cried, and Sakura suddenly gained an understanding of what had brought the foolish girl to her door.

Apparently the boy she had healed chose to ignore her wishes for secrecy. Annoyed she groused that she should have expected this outcome. Perhaps his recount of her feet amongst the towns children had garnered her a reputation as a witch of sorts. Prepared to nip these rumours in the bud she began to open her mouth to deny the girls claims but was cut off by the Childs desperate ramblings.

"M-my brother said you healed his leg for him with just a touch!"

'So she's the little boys sister.' Sakura quietly thought to herself.

"He's... he's very sick right now. Has been for days." The little girl continued with melancholy creeping into her tone.

"I heard the doctor telling Mother he won't last 'till the end of the week... But the doctors can't do magic like you can. You could save him!"

Sakura was forced to recall the familiar blue orbs belonging to the little boy her conscience had drawn her to heal. Sunny hair the colour of wheat and eyes so similar to Naruto. Once again her conscience began to see fit in meddling with her affairs. His weepy eyed sister tugged at her dusty heart strings. She felt a pang of remorse strike her at the news of the boys ailment. She pictured cherub like cheeks reddened with fever and blue eyes crinkled in pain.

The logic part of her mind rationalized that going into the village to heal the boy was a foolish risk to take. Any display of her healing talents would surely identify her to others as a ninja. Should the adult villagers discover her status they ran the risk of informing authorities or summoning a lynch mob. Why place herself in such a vulnerable position for a child she owes nothing?

A pang of guilt struck her at the thought of letting the child die. Had she truly become so heartless she would ignore an innocents suffering before letting them slip away far too young?

No. She couldn't live with herself knowing she had neglected to keep ocean blue eyes from closing forever. In a way it would be like watching Naruto die all over again. She could save the owner of these eyes. In all fairness she had been doomed from the start, there had never been any choice in the matter.

By the time evening had struck, Sakura found herself standing at the door step of one of the many quaint little houses that bordered the villages market square. The young girl was draped across her back, having lacked the stamina to maintain the urgent pace needed to reach her brother in time. Shifting the Childs weight sprawled across her frame Sakura cradled the girl with one arm while the other delivered a few sharp raps against the doorway.

A muffled shifting could be heard from behind the entrance, its residents more than likely puzzled to who could be calling at such an hour. Within moments a short statured woman opened the door. The womans plain features were twisted in confusion and dark circles lay beneath her eyes. A testament to the womans turmoil. She had probably not slept in days, rooted to the bedside of her sickly child.

Upon seeing her offspring clinging to the back of a stranger the woman almost immediately slipped right into her parental role.

"Ebiko! Where have you been!? I've been worried sick!" The middle aged woman cried. "You're Father and I have been frantic!"


	3. Chapter 3

She had instantly grown uncomfortable in the presence of the concerned mother. The woman's maternal nature was on full display as she fussed over the youth atop Sakura's back. It was painfully normal and reminded Sakura of a simpler time. When her own parents would gripe about her whereabouts after dark. Back then she had found their nagging annoying. Now she would give almost anything just to hear the familiar cadence of their voice once more.

She stifled the feelings that the memory of her parents brought and turned to face the fretting woman before her.

"She travelled deep within the southern woods to find me. I am told your son is sick."

The middle aged woman turned to face Sakura with mild surprise at the revelation.

"You have my thanks for bringing my daughter home, however it is in vain. The doctors have told me there is nothing that can be done to save my son." The woman replied in a warbled tone as she fought back tears. The topic of her sons impending lethal illness crushed the woman to her core.

Sakura gave a deep breath before moving to let the child down from her back. She nudged the girl towards her mother, predicting that at her next words the woman would wish her to be no where near her children.

"I am able offer a medical service far more advanced than the doctors from your town."

The woman failed to catch on to her meaning at first.

"It hardly matters, traveling city specialists have seen to him as well and all speak of the same fate. We can only hope to make him comfortable now." The woman replied with a choked sob, clutching her daughter near to her bosom. The child looked up at her mother who was choking out sobs and teary eyed.

"Mama she's magic. The other doctors don't have the glowing hands." The Childs words were innocently spoken but their meaning inspired grave implications.

Sakura simply stared at the mother. Not attempting to deny or corrective Childs words. The older woman curiously tilted her head in a confused manner before her feature were alight with understanding. Simultaneously followed by an aggressive abhorrence and fear.

"You're a ninja." She said with a tone laced in condemnation and terror.

"I was once a highly regarded medical ninja during the old regime. My skills were unparalleled and only equal to my mentors a former sanin. I understand you may have reservations in accepting a ninjas help but I am confident I can save your child."

"LEAVE THIS PLACE IMMEDIATELY! Your kind will only bring trouble!"

"I only mean to hel-"

"GET AWAY BEFORE I CONTACT THE GUARD!" The woman screeched. Sakura had expected this reaction. The woman began frantically waving her arms in a shooing motion and hollering at the top of her lungs for Sakura to leave. The pink haired girl began to turn to do so, after all she could not force her medical skills upon someone who did not want it. Perhaps she would have once forced herself past the woman in a fit to save the Childs life but those days were gone now. Her desire to help was reluctant and the danger of her actions bore steep consequences. The woman shrieking was abruptly cut off by a gruff voice coming from inside the house.

"Mai... Let her in."

Looking past the hysterical woman Sakura saw the defeated figure of a rugged old man sitting in a rocking chair. His eyes were bloodshot and tired. Accompanied by inflamed bags and deep wrinkles.

"Ninja or not we are not in any position to be refusing help. If it is shinobi sorcery that can save our boy I'd welcome the devil himself." The rough voiced croaked. The broken man turned to face Sakura.

"Please. Save my son."

Sakura gave a firm nod at the mans words and pushed past the stunned frame of the wife to enter the home. She made her way into the room that the ragged man had camped out beside in his old wooden chair.

Upon entering the room she saw the familiar young boy lying upon a bed. He was drenched in sweat and his rosy cheeks spoke of a dangerously high fever. His heartbreakingly blue eyes were encompassed by dilated pupils and glazed over.

Her medical mind began to instinctually identify the boys symptoms. Her eyes darting over his form while her brain operated at high speed to determine the best course of treatment. She raised a palm to hover over the boys figure and when it began to glow she heard a distinct yelp of protest from the boys mother. It was soon silenced by a scathing glare from the boys father and Sakura took this as permission to continue.

Her chakra began to sweep through the boys system, every vein every blood cell was inspected and documented in her mind as she sought to locate the source of sickness plaguing the boys system. It hadn't taken long to identify the problem. The boys immune system had begun attacking itself, inviting mere common bacterias to fester into becoming a major threat to the boys system. She had come across the anomaly before and instantly began appropriate treatment. She first encased thee remaining docile white blood cells in a layer of chakra to prevent further damage, while eliminating the violent cells attacking the boys body. Sakura placed a palm at the sole of the boys feet and began to send a cooling wave of energy to help lower the boys temperature. When the heat emitted by the child began to decline she began to remove the bacterial infection from the body. By creating substitute for the missing natural anti bodies, she molded her chakra to act as an immune system and attack the harmful bacteria. She was not surprised the common doctors had been unable to treat the boy. It was a complex procedure even for required finite control of chakra on a molecular level, she was sure the procedure would leave her exhausted and drained by the end. She felt her body begin to grow weak and her limbs begin to shake. Still the quaking of her hands did little to stop her. She was determined to heal the boy. She fought the weight that had settled upon her eyelids and persevered.

Eventually the last of the infection had been eliminated and she had begun to clone the healthy cells in hopes of rebuilding an immune system within the child. The boys civilian family stared on awestruck at her glowing hands as they brought a healthy flush back into the boys face.

Sensing her task was complete Sakura succumbed to her bodies outcry for rest and allowed her vision to fade to black. The boy would live. His blue eyes, so much like Naruto's would be alight with life. She had saved these eyes from closing forever.

She took care not fall atop her patient, simply crumbling on the floor of the bedroom in her exhaustion.

She was mildly surprised to awaken tucked beneath sheets atop a lumpy mattress. She had half expected the family to throw her out of the house immediately after her healing of their son.

She felt lightheaded and her joints ached but this was common after chakra depletion. She waited a beat to gather her bearings before waddling her way towards the bedrooms doorway. Upon opening the door she was greeted by the sight of the humble civilian family huddled around a dining table. Their eyes she to her figure as she entered.

She felt a swell of happiness at seeing the little boy seated at the table looking perfectly healthy. The little girl was the first to speak upon her entry.

"You're awake! It's been almost two days that you were asleep!" The young girl cried. Internally Sakura cringed at the thought of being so vulnerable for such an amount of time in the presence of others.

"You saved him, you did! It's like he was never sick at all! I knew you're magic could fix him! I knew it!" The boy gave her a small shy smile at his sisters words. He appeared to begin to make a movement towards her but the firm hand of his mother gripping his shoulder stopped him.

The mother looked far less haggard than she had been. Likely finally able to get a nights rest with her child once again well. However the woman face was pinched and suspicious as she watched the pink haired kunoichi. Her stern glare practically screamed of her discontent with Sakura's presence.

"You can stay for breakfast, but then I want you gone." The woman spoke in a clipped tone, not meeting Sakura's eyes.

Sakura could hardly blame her lack of gratitude. Harbouring a fugitive was dangerous. Having a rogue ninja could only bring trouble to the simple family.

Sakura gave a small nod of understanding before quietly taking a seat at the table. A small bowl of what looked to be over cooked gruel was placed before her. Despite the unappetizing appearance of the dish she quickly dug in to the small portion of food she had been offered. The atmosphere was tense, so much so even the children had become quiet and stiff during the meal. The homely man at the head of the table seemed content to ignore her presence and carry about as though it were an average morning. Sakura silently thanked him for that.

His wife however, was fidgety and skittish the entire eyes kept glancing towards the entryway and her knuckles were white wringing a dishtowel in her hands.

Sakura scarfed down he food as quickly as her body would allow her, eager to be on her way.

A loud banging gave everyone at the table a start. Sakura had felt sheer dread engulf her body. A part of her had known it would come to this.

The front door of the house was breached by a barrage of uniformed men. Armed to the teeth they surrounded her. Barking orders to raise her hands and lay flat against the ground.

The father appeared rightfully stunned by the intrusion, while the mother looked on guilty.

"I'm sorry! It was for my family!" She cried.

Sakura gave a nod of understanding at the woman betrayal and solely complied with the mens orders.

She gave a grunt as the ninja quickly cuffed her hands behind her back with an excessive use of force. A knee was digging into her back as she lay still while they shackled her with a chakra restraining cuff. Sakura could hardly blame the woman for alerting the authorities to her presence. Her family would have suffered if it was found that she had aided an unregistered ninja.

Sakura was roughly hauled to her feet and dragged out of the quaint dwelling. She mentally catalogued the scene of the family watching on as she was hauled away.

The children looked terrified and confused in the embrace of their mother who looked ashamed. But their was no regret upon the woman expression, her husband looked to be remorseful at his wife actions but neglected to intervene in Sakura's arrest.

Sakura allowed herself to be man handled by the ninja as they made their way out of the village. She began to contemplate the fate her captors had in store for her. All scenarios seemed gruesome and horrific. She was well aware of the consequences for being an unregistered ninja. She had witnessed many allies suffer through these repercussions and heard talk of even greater horrors. Being a woman, and a fairly attractive one at that, only brought a whole new array of potential terrors.

Her life was already miserable enough as is, and she resigned that she would rather die than remain in captivity.

Sakura waited until they troupe was well outside the village. She would not subject civilians to becoming a casualty in this battle. Her clammy palms clutched at the scuffed metal spoon she had hidden in her sleeve before succumbing to her captors. In her head she slowly counted to three before taking a deep breath.

With unsettling speed she flicked the utensil into her grip, brandishing it as one would a kunai. Before the men around her could react she jammed the piece of cutlery into the eye socket of the man nearest to her. He hollered in pain and his cry alerted the rest of the surrounding troupe, who quickly adopted a battle stance.

With all of her remaining strength she threw her body towards the ninja to her immediate left hoping to set him off balance. As the group rushed to regain control of their prisoner she ducked, and dodged swinging at anyone who got too close. When she saw an opening in their formation she took it. Dashing forward she sprinted like she never had before to escape. Punishing her legs with a gruelling pace she willed her weak body to go forth.

As she ran further away from the ninja there came a moment where she thought to herself that she would make it to glorious freedom. She would leave them behindin her tracks and once again remain hidden in a new reclusive town. She had hoped.

This hope was soon obliterated as her fragile form began to slow under pressure and she soon felt something knock the wind out of her as she was tackled to the ground.

A crushing weight pinned her to the ground and a sickeningly moist puff of air assaulted the skin of her neck.

"You think you're clever don't you bitch?!" The angry voice spat. "You won't get away from me again. Get me more restraints and frisk her properly this time you idiots!"

Minutes later she found herself bound with chains and rope hanging off her every inch. Her legs were shackled her arms tied uncomfortably tight and a collar was placed around her neck like a dog. She stewed in anger at the restraints, particularly concerning her neck. The guards were cruel and mocking as they yanked on the collar to lead her around like an animal. They made crude and perverse remarks at her expense, she spat at the ones who came too close or attempted to grope her. It had promptly earned her a swift backhand to her jaw but did little to deter her from doing the same should they harass her once again.

As the ninja dragged her along with them she had come to develop a special distaste for the captain on the convoy. The man was a truly sickening form of human being. As the men set up camp he would approach her alone to taunt the pink haired girl. He would hurl threats and insults at her in the hopes of making her squirm. She never gave him the satisfaction and it only seemed to egg him on more.

He would whisper slimy twisted fantasies in her ear when they were alone.

"Pretty thing like you would make a good slave." He would whisper to her while his hand wandered along her thigh.

"As soon as we get to the base to process you I think I'll take you for my own. This pretty pink hair would look wonderful bobbing up and down on my cock."

Sakura never replied to the man. Mentally she thought to herself that she would sooner bite off the appendage. However she gave the man no reaction to his disgusting advances and it only served to make him angrier. She took twisted pleasure in the mans grievance at her unfazed demeanour. If the captain was in a particularly foul mood he would occasionally grace her with a blow to the ribs.

"As long as I don't mark up that pretty face you'll still turn a profit." He would hiss at her after the vicious blows.

The act of simply breathing had come to hurt, she suspected that she had a few cracked ribs at this point. But, the pain motivated her. As they neared their home base the panic had begun to set in. She was truly petrified of what was to come, but the stinging pain in her sides made her angry enough not to show it. She would not break for these monsters posing as men. Even being the emotional wreck she was, she found strength in defiance.

"We are almost at home base. I'll have you warming my bed before sundown, you rowdy bitch!" The captain had hissed in her ear one day as they continued their travels.

She remained stoic and blank at his words as she was tugged along by her collar. Her gut twisted at the thought and she vowed not make the smallest action easy for him. With each step the captain seemed to grow more giddy while she felt dread well up in the pit of her stomach.

In the distance she saw a large tower and her heart began to pound in her chest as she neared it. The building would mark the final nail being hammered in her coffin. Her fate would be sealed and a new barrage of suffering would begin.

Entering the tower she felt like a scared helpless child. Perhaps this was meant to be her fate. Her punishment for failing to save Naruto. She was trapped, a victim to her circumstances. There seemed to be no way out of her current situation.

Except one.

It was card she held that she dreaded to play. Realistically it was a long shot perhaps it wouldn't even have any effect at all. And if it did it would only lead to a far more horrific set of woes.

A feeble looking man sat behind a desk. His hair neatly combed and glasses pushed tightly against the bridge of his nose. His brow was pinched and lips pursed as he robotically went about his paperwork. The rigidity of his movements looked as though he were filing taxes instead of processing applications for slavery and documents of imprisonment.

She began to tremble as she was dragged before the man. Internally she was frantically debating on using the last card in her deck.

Should she do it? Would it only serve to bring further strife?

The captain practically skipped towards the desk an unsettling grin upon his features.

"I've got a rogue one here. I wanna fit her as a slave. Thinking about renting her myself. Just need the applications." He told the small man before him.

The man at the desk pushed forward a stack of papers to the captain not even looking up to see the face of the woman he had just condemned.

His lack of acknowledgment made Sakura angry. The smug smirk on the captains face as he began to fill out the necessary documents only enraged her further. Consequences be damned she would not allow herself to become this mans toy without exhausting every possible option she had.

In a raspy tone she called out to anyone who would listen in hopes of catching the right ear.

"My name is Sakura Haruno."

The man behind the desk seemed to freeze at her words. The paperwork he had been so engrossed in was halted to a stop as his eyebrows shot towards his hairline.

The captain looked confused by her declaration before attempting to return to the papers before him. The papers however were abruptly seized from his grasp behind the spectacled man and promptly tossed beneath the desk into a presumed trash bin.

The captain looked affronted by the mans actions and looked as though he were about to raise protest when the mans nasally tone promptly cut off his speech.

"You're request is denied. You are now immediately under new strict orders to take your squad and transport this woman directly to Central base. Under no circumstances is the package to become compromised under your care. You will leave immediately and upon your arrival you are herby under strict orders to report directly to him."

The captain looked positively shell shocked at this new development. Sakura in turn felt equally surprised at this revelation. Her foreboding dread of what was to come was momentarily placated by the satisfaction in seeing the captain appear so off kilter. The man was positively fuming as he gruffly barked for his squadron to move out yanking her along behind him.

Once the tower had become nothing more than a speck in the distance the captain had whipped around to viciously yank at the chain around her neck.

Pulling the collar towards the ground she was slammed onto her stomach while the larger man crushed a knee into her back and began hollering into her ear. Livid at his fun having been spoiled.

"WHAT DID YOU DO YOU LITTLE BITCH!" He screamed from his position atop her back. "JUST WHO THE HELL ARE YOU?!"

In a fit of petty vindictiveness Sakura calmly replied.

"Someone who won't be warming your bed."

The leg dug further into her back and she let out a pained gasp. A meaty hand wedged its way into the locks of her hair and pulled at her scalp. She followed the captains grip to avoid the pain and she was dragged before the burly man. Looking upwards with a cocky grin at his furious glare. A backhand had her seeing stars and the stinging point of contact would surely bruise. She watched as the man pulled his hand back once more to deliver another blow before he was stopped by the voice of one of his comrades.

"Captain! The orders are that she is to remain undamaged. They are his orders." The nameless ninja spoke warily. Hints of fear lined his tone as if the mere mention of him would bring about repercussions.

The captain held his hand at these words, considering the ramifications of his actions. He glared at the tiny woman before him before slowly beginning to lower his hand.

"Heh. Coward." Sakura scoffed. Perhaps not her wisest decision to goad the captain on but she could hardly resist the temptation of rubbing salt in the wound upon his ego.

The captains temper soared to new heights and blinded him to the threat of consequences. Anger reignited he drew back his fist before delivering a swift jab to the pink haired womans eye socket. She felt a burst of shattering pain before her world faded to darkness.


	4. Chapter 4

Sakura awoke to splitting pain. Her ears were ringing and she could hardly see out of her left eye. Her entire body felt as though it had been thrown through a wood chipper and consciousness was difficult to maintain. She would have welcomed the numbness the blackness provided had she not awoken to find her self in unsettlingly familiar surroundings.

She recognized these woods. She had once known them like the back of her hand. It had been years since she had dared to venture close enough to these woods. In a few meters she knew they would pass an oddly shaped oak tree who's branches twisted in an unsettling way. From then on they would walk exactly 3.7 kilometres before a hauntingly nostalgic gate would come into view.

She had once welcomed the sight of Konohas large green doors. It had once signalled that she was almost home. Now she positively dreaded the sight. Beyond those gates was no longer home. It was the gates to hell. Those gates harboured the devil himself. He had taken the place she had once called home and shaped it into what could only be described as a twisted reflection of her youths birthplace. It was a hollow imitation of itself and its very existence under his leadership served only to mock her.

Seeing those gates now she felt sick. She was almost assuredly concussed, but the fogginess of her head injury did little to cease her from struggling.

"No! NO!" She cried. "You can't take me there! You can't bring me back to that place!" She began to pitifully struggle against the men holding her hostage as they dragged her closer towards those damned gates.

"NO!" She screeched as she fought them raving like a mad woman. "YOU CAN'T TAKE ME BACK THERE! YOU CAN'T TAKE ME TO HIM!"

Her struggles grew more violent, even animalistic in nature as they approached. Her nails scratched at any surface they came into contact with. Her teeth gnashed as she attempted to bite the hands restraining her. Her flailing limbs proved to be difficult for her escorts to contain. She had always been unusually strong. Even at her weakest and cut off from her chakra she was a force to be reckoned with. It took five men just to hold her still.

She would not make this easy for them. She would not let them bring her back to that place. To him.

'Let them bring him a corpse.' The dark part of her thought bitterly.

"Shit! She's trying to bite her tongue!" One of the guards realized as blood began to dribble down the sides of her mouth. The handle of a kunai was forced between her teeth to keep her from attempting to bite her own tongue off. She looked more animal than human. Like a rabid coyote gnawing off its lown leg to escape a hunters trap.

Passing through the gates onlookers stared at the violent spectacle with varying shock and appal. Still no one dared to interfere with the work of the guard. Sakura only grew more frantic with their gazes shrieking and sobbing as she struggled to escape the village that held so many painful memories for her.

Panicked tears flooded her eyes and her limbs flailed wildly in an attempt to fight her restraints.

Then she felt it and suddenly froze.

Her struggles came to a screeching halt and she seemed to go limp in the arms of the men carrying her. She felt it and her body instinctually became as rigid as a statue.

She had sensed a chakra presence that she had not felt in what seemed like forever. It was a chakra that haunted her nightmares and was just as terrifying now as it had been in her memories.

That chakra paralyzed her with an unshakable terror. Petrified her to her very core.

It was his chakra.

She recalled the last time that she had felt that chakra.

It had been suppressed by numerous seals and caged within the confines of a prison cell but it was still every bit as sinister.

Following the war and Naruto's death Sasuke had been locked away in Konoha's jail. Originally he had been taken to the hospital to treat the most severe of his wounds. His left arm was practically charred to a crisp and shattered from the over use of his signature ninjutsu. However even shackled to the gurney in his weakened state he had been rabid and volatile towards any of the medical personnel who attempted to approach him.

"SAKURA!" He had shrieked at them. "BRING ME SAKURA!"

It wasn't always her that he had screamed for. Sometimes he would call for Itachi or Naruto. Hollering one moment and mumbling nonsensical ramblings to himself the next. He appeared to have gone truly mad. His lunacy was evident in his outcries and eventually the madness became beyond the capabilities of the hospital and it was determined that throwing him in a cell would be best. She had heard whispers of crazed bouts of hysterical laughter emitting from his cell, followed by agonized wailing only moments later.

"WHERE IS SHE!?" He would shout at the guards with a crazed look in his eyes. Ninja dreaded being assigned to guard duty near his cell. It was a disturbing and harrowing experience to witness the unstable young man fall into the pits of insanity.

Sakura for her part refused to go near him. She was holed away in her apartment building, more often than not refusing to leave her bed. She was plagued by agony and grief that drowned any will power she possessed. Naruto was dead. There was no reason to do anything anymore. Least of all answer the summons of his murderer.

Sakura's thoughts had taken a dark path and she found herself hoping that he was quickly put to death. The Sasuke she had known was already dead, this monster wearing his skin and hiding behind his face, had no earthly right to continue living on this planet. He should have been sent back to the depths of hell from which he came. The only problem with Sasuke's death was that there was no one apart from the now deceased Naruto who was capable of doing so. Even bound and restrained Sasuke posed a lethal threat to anyone who dared to come near. The only viable option was to keep him detained until the council was able to find the means of a suitable end for his crimes.

One day Sasuke's ramblings and shouting stopped all together. He refused to say a word to anyone. Even under the most intense sessions of interrogation he remained silent.

While the shrieking and mumbling had ended this new silence was perhaps even more unsettling.

It was this silence that had brought Ibiki to Sakura's doorstep.

Her petite form had been draped in a quilt her grandmother had made for her when she was a child. The kindly woman had not been a talented seamstress. The blanket was comprised by an assortment of patches of cheaply made cloth. The fabrics varied in texture and colour, most pieces visibly frayed at the edges. The clusters of wild patterns were accompanied by the brightest shades of every colour imaginable and seemed to follow no rhyme or reason. The vibrant disarray of material was joined together by shoddy, uneven stitching that was so clearly done by hand. Still despite the quilt being so poorly made, Sakura loved it.

She could sometimes picture her grandmother making the blanket. Her frail hands would be weathered with age and tremble slightly as they held the needle. The old woman's eyes would be narrowed in concentration, the corners wrinkling in concentration behind a small pair of round spectacles on account of her poor vision.

And undoubtably her thin lips would be upturned in a slight smile as she happily sewed away at her gift for her favourite granddaughter. Her grandmother had always smiled for Sakura and Sakura had always smiled back. Her brittle bones had never stopped the old woman from chasing after the pink haired toddler in their visits to the nearby park. The womans eyes betrayed her age, their liveliness shone through crowsfeet at their corners.

Her grandmother had been her favourite person. Always unwaveringly cheerful and relentlessly kind, she had showered Sakura with love. With every messy loop of thread and wacky pattern Sakura could feel her grandmothers warmth. Wrapped around her the blanket served as a reminder of her grandmothers embrace.

She clung to the small amount of comfort it provided. The worn patches of fabric felt like an amor that shielded her from the outside world. That ridiculous blanket was perhaps the only thing that eased the ache in her heart those days. There had been people in the beginning who had tried to assuage her grief. Offering condolences and invitations for a shoulder to cry on or an ear to listen. But Sakura did not want to talk, and she doubted they truly wanted to listen. The war had affected them all and everyone was coping with their own losses.

Ino, bless her soul, had tried to be there for her childhood friend. Even while mourning the death of her own father. The blonde would stop by occasionally with plates of food that would go untouched until her next visit to the gloomy apartment. Tossing the spoiled meal into the trash only to replace it with another. She had stopped bringing by dishes that would sprout mould or rot before she could replace it. Now it was mostly loaves of bread and nonperishables that occupied Sakura's kitchen. The prepackaged foods consisted of mainly canned fruits and vegetables. There had been a box or two of instant rice laying around and a couple of different canned soups. Tomato. Vegetable. Miso. Chicken. Seafood. Beef. Sakura had begun to amass a healthy selection. However she bitterly noticed that ramen had never made an appearance in Ino's grocery deliveries. Sakura had never mentioned the obvious avoidance of the salty noodles to Ino, but she was silently grateful for it.

Ino had tried to be chipper in the beginning visits. Throwing out a few half hearted jokes, even some tentatively at her friends expense. Nattering about some clothing boutique she had seen on her way over. Her pitiful attempt at normalcy had been met with silence from her friend and eventually Ino stopped pretending.

Although she had the best of intentions Ino seemed to have developed an obvious wariness concerning Sakura. It was like her friend thought she was made of glass and could break into pieces at any moment. 'Forehead' had become an affectionate term between the two. Now Ino felt nervous and awkward using the nickname. As if its utterance might set off the fragile shell of a girl. The name was from a happier time, where Sakura's biggest grievance came from the size of her brow.

Sakura's brow was the least offensive part of her appearance these days. Her eyes were bloodshot and the skin surrounding was swollen and an angry red. Irritated by a lack of sleep and the constant steady stream of tears. Pink hair was mussed and greasy. The locks she had once taken such pride in grooming were matted in places and helplessly tangled throughout. Neglected, the pink strands twisted together messily from the rubbing against the tear stained cotton of her bedsheets.

In her melancholy she could not be bothered to eat, let only run a brush through her hair. She was perfectly content to waste away into nothing, buried in her bedding. Her face had become gaunt and her once rosy cheeks looked sallow. The lack of nutrients had turned her pale skin a sickly shade as it stretched itself across the bones of her emaciated form.

She knew she looked positively pitiful, but could not bring herself to give a damn. She would have once abhorred the thought of appearing so few other visitors she received also seemed to be determined to walk on eggshells in her presence. Their tones became a higher pitch in her presence she had noticed. As if raising their voice a few octaves could make her believe the faked cheerfulness dripping from their words. Their eyes were all the same. Filled with pity and trying to bury their own pain. She sometimes wondered if the tight lipped smiles were for her sake or their own. She felt none of the embarrassment or shame in letting them bare witness to the miserable state she had allowed her self to fall into. She didn't care. Let the whole damn world watch her fall apart. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered anymore.

Two days after returning home Sai had brought her a book entitled 'Dealing with Death'. From what she gathered glancing at the cover it was meant to be a self help book for coping. Apparently according to Sai's knowledge of the literature, she was in stage two of the grieving process. He soon after recommended that she move on to stages three and four. Stage four apparently dictated that she should begin embracing what the author referred to as 'emotional creativity'. Sai had suggested she join him to paint some time his signature icy smile in place. Sakura didn't reply.

"I've been painting his portrait." The artist began, and when the smile slowly fell from his face Sakura knew she was not ready to hear what he had to say. "He doesn't make for an aesthetically pleasing subject. But lately he's all I find myself drawing."

She knew that Sai was just as pained by Naruto's death as she was. As a friend she knew there was an unspoken obligation for her to be there for him just as he was trying to be there for her. But Sakura was not strong enough to help herself let alone another person. Naruto had always been good at making others find strength when they needed it. But he wasn't hear to give her strength and Sakura didn't even want to try finding it.

"I could bring you one of the paintings. My latest one looks exactly like Nar-"

"No."

Later on, Chouji had tried to bring her some barbecue from his favourite restaurant, but the smell only made her sick.

Tenten had attempted to be understanding, sharing in the loss of her own team mate. But it had only ended in the brunette breaking in to quiet sobs as she attempted to make her way through recounting a happy memory of her fallen comrade. Perhaps she had hoped she and Sakura could share the pain of their similar circumstance. But Sakura did not want to talk or reminisce about dead teammates.

Lee had been the first person to get more than two words out of her. He had taken to bringing her flowers. Sometimes in a bouquet or a vase. Other times a single carnation would be left on her windowsill or the foot of her door. Ino had accompanied him during his first visit. She remembered hearing Ino's hushed hissing for him to avoid mentioning Naruto in any capacity. Sakura had been having one of her better days. Eating a few bites of food to appease her blonde friend, even letting her brush at the unruly nest of pink locks.

It hadn't taken Ino long to realize the subject of Naruto sent Sakura into a strange comatose state. A certain shade of orange or the wafting smell of pork broth could set her off. A sleep deprived Sakura had once claimed to see someone with a blonde head of hair walking past her window and had become convinced Naruto was in the village. Ino had found her wandering the streets barefoot at 2 o'clock in the morning wearing only her pyjamas with a dazed look in her eye. Robotically she explained to a concerned Ino that she was looking for Naruto, calmly asking her friend if she had seen him.

It had only taken a minute and 16 seconds for a teary eyed Lee to burst into an emotional typhoon. Ino had been horrified as he began sobbing uncontrollably voicing the unfairness at the loss of youth through ragged gasps. And as was his nature, Lee grasped at a silver lining that had gone unseen by everyone else in the wake of tragedy. His body shuddered as he fought against the quaking sobs that had plagued him only moments before.

"I promise you Sakura I'm going to honour their sacrifice and become a ninja that would make them proud! I'll become a ninja that Neji w-would have been proud to call a rival. I'm going to make this world into the place Naruto wanted it to be!"

Ino's eyes were glued to Sakura as if she were facing off with a wild bear that could snap at any moment. She didn't dare to move as Lee continued his emotional tirade, studying the bedridden girl for any warning signs. But Sakura remained impassive. Dead eyed and apathetic as had become her norm. Ino had questioned if she was even hearing anything Lee was saying. She was only disproven when Sakura spoke. The voice was raspy and barely above a whisper but she spoke.

"He would have liked that." She said simply. Without another word she turned herself away from the two.

While Sakura had no doubt Lee would strive to uphold his vow with every fibre of his being, the promise of a brighter future was stupid and idealistic in a world full of wickedness and anguish. Still, Naruto had been stupid and idealistic. He would have wanted everyone to share in Lee's foolish optimism and fight against all odds for a better tomorrow. But, Naruto could not be in that world, and for Sakura that world was not one she cared to be a part of.

Shikamaru had been the least intrusive visitor she'd had. The two of them had never been particularly close. She guessed his appearance in her room was a result of Ino's urging. Still she found that his presence the most soothing. He had walked in without saying a word to her other than a slight nod before making himself comfortable. Under his arm was a familiar wooden board coated with a glossy varnish. As he shuffled to situate himself she heard the faint rattle of what she assumed were tiles clacking together in his pocket. Stretched out on the floor at the foot of her bed he began to set up the pieces for a game of shogi. From her position atop the bed she could clearly make out the surface of the board. She watched with detached interest as his hands lazily placed the tiles into position. Once the board had been prepared Shikamaru gave her a small glance from over his shoulder. Silently asking if she wanted to play. When she simply continued to stare at the board, he turned back unphased and began to play a game with himself.

Sakura watched the tiles be shuffled around the board. His ingenuity was evident as he played. Occasionally he would for a few moments before letting out a sigh. As Sakura gazed at the board she would think that surely he had bested himself and could concede defeat. Her own mind instinctually running through his possible strategies until she deemed a counter impossible. Only to be mistaken as the acclaimed master strategist moved the small tiles into a formation that was invisible to those beneath his intellectual prowess. Her mind subconsciously revelled in the stimulation watching him play provided. The soft tap of the tiles against the smooth surface of the board was soothing. With every move he made the sound signified a new puzzle for her to solve as she worked to unravel his thought process. Before either realized the room had grown dark signifying the end of another day. She had been surprised to see it pass so quickly. Time had dragged at a gruellingly slow pace for her. The monotony of her days tormented her. Each day like the last. Miserable and redundant. A sick part of her sometimes wondered how many more days it would be until she was finished. She had wanted to speed up time until there were no more days left. No more hurt and pain. No more dead friends and twisted monsters that looked like a boy she had once known.

Shikamaru hadn't tried to give her words of comfort or baby her as though she were an invalid. He had given her something she hadn't even known she needed. A distraction. After Shikamarus visit Sakura had begun to throw herself into distractions. She would count the tiny white peaks of the stucco on her ceiling. She counted the cans of food she wouldn't eat and the number of letters on each label wrapped around the metal cylinders. She had memorized every ingredient on each label and would add up all the calories of every item. She counted the number of steps it took to get from her bed to the bathroom and back. Counted the number of sheets in a roll of toilet paper, and was mildly surprised to find it did not meet the number advertised by its manufacturer. She counted the number of seconds Ino would take after knocking at her door before resigning to letting herself in when no one answered.

Sakura hadn't realized that she had begun to count outlaid until it was abruptly pointed out by her blonde friend during one of her visits.

"Sakura will you stop with the fucking counting!" The woman suddenly barked. Sakura gave a small glance in her direction before once again staring at her kitchen tiles and mumbling numbers under her breath.

"GOD DAMMIT SAKURA ENOUGH!" Ino screamed.

"Enough! Enough with the counting! Enough with staying in bed! Enough with trying to shove food down your stupid throat! Enough with staying locked in here so you can pretend the world outside doesn't exist!" Her friends screams of frustration were met with a blank stare and it only seemed to anger Ino more.

"You are not the only one who is hurting right now! We all are! But we are at least trying to deal with it and put ourselves back together! You don't even seem interested in living anymore Sakura! And it's fucking selfish!" Each syllable spat at Sakura was accompanied by a finger aggressively being poked inches from the centre of her face. She absently wondered if Ino might accidentally poke an eye out with her manicured nails.

As she watched the shouting kunoichi's pointer finger rush towards her and retreat she noticed it was not as well maintained as it should have been. Ino had always had pretty hands. Although Ino had really always had pretty everything. Sakura however had always found Ino's best feature to be her hands.

In the past she would often compare her hands to Ino's. Ino had slender long fingers that seemed to make everything she touched with them seem graceful. Her own digits were short and stubby, with knuckles that looked too large from being broken one too many times. Sakura's hands had calluses and her nails were uneven from being bitten and broken. The skin around the nails was nicked in the odd place from a hangnail she had picked at. Her skin was unusually dry and always seemed rough. Her swollen knuckles usually adorned a scratch or two. The occasional split would grace the abused joints a result of a well delivered punch. It would sting like hell but she had always rationalize that healing chakra should be reserved for more serious injuries, not for having pretty hands. A bandaid and antiseptic usually sufficed for the minor scrapes. Still she would often remiss over Ino's perfectly symmetrical nails. The tips were always filed into a smooth curved arch that complemented their reasonable length she had deemed fashionable, yet practical enough for a ninja. She would paint them pretty colours to suit her mood, and was religious in reapplying a fresh coat at the first signs of polish beginning to chip. Ino took pride in her hands.

The hands in front of Sakura's face now did not look like Ino's hands. The nails were absent of their signature polish and horribly uneven. Some appeared broken and chipped while others were outgrown and misshapen.

For the first time in what seemed like forever Sakura felt guilt. Ino had been suffering just as much as herself. Only she seemed determined not to let it consume her as it had Sakura.

But Ino was not like Sakura. Ino was broken but she could be fixed. She could put her pieces back together. Sakura knew she could. Ino was strong. She was the confident loud fierce girl that befriended the shy mop of pink sitting alone on the playground. She made Sakura strong. Solid. She did not let her break down from the cruel teasing of the girls at the academy. Ino did not let Sakura break as a rival to the blonde herself. Ino pushed Sakura to be strong even when now she wasn't strong herself.

Sakura wished she could be strong like Ino. She had always admired that in Ino, more than her shiny hair and pretty hands. Ino did not break.

Sakura had thought that she unbreakable like Ino. She could be beat down and hurt. Chipped away in places, missing a few pieces, but not broken. She had worked so hard to become strong, and when she had she worked to become stronger. She could lift boulders and shatter the earth with her pinky finger. She could take being run through by a blade without flinching.

But Sakura could not take this. This had broken her.

"I'm sorry." She said cutting off her friends yelling.

Sakura knew she was broken. Shattered to her core.

But broken things will remain just that if no one tries to fix them.

Ino and every person who had stood by her in her sorry state had tried.

If not for herself she at least owed it to them to try too.

"Enough." Sakura agreed.

"I need you to see him." The stern man had told her point blank, never one known to be delicate. Ibiki was a stern man hardened by his line of work and held no patience for social graces. His face was marred by scars that only bespoke of the seriousness behind his request.

"Do you realize what you are asking me?" She had softly spoken after the initial jolt of morbid surprise at the audacity of his statement.

She stood before the decorated officer more presentable than she had in weeks. Basic hygiene was once again routine and she had managed to put a few pounds back on to her figure. Eating still seemed more of a chore than anything else, but it made Ino happy to see her pick at the food in front of her and that provided her with reason enough to fake an appetite.

She had still refused to leave her apartment despite Ino's gentle nudging. She was not ready to see the world outside of those walls. She did not want to see the rubble and destruction left over from the war. She did not want to hear the villagers gossip in hushed whispers about what had happened to 'that poor girls tragic team'. She did not want to read the hospitals detailed reports of all the damaged people she couldn't fix. She did not want to walk by the places Naruto used to visit. She did not want to see Naruto's name engraved into the monument like a decoration to fill a empty space and be forgotten on a stupid rock.

More than anything though, Sakura did not want to take one step closer to where the man who put the name on that rock festered in a cell. She would not leave her safe haven until he was buried far beneath a rock with no name.

At Ibiki's mention of seeing him she wanted nothing more than to run back between her sheets and stay there until she could never see his face again.

"I know what it is I'm asking from you." The man replied evenly. There was no shame in his voice as he faced the trembling girl before him. Asking her to come face to face with her tormentor.

"No." She choked out firmly making to slam the door shut in the mans face. Protocol or duty be damned. She had seen more of that monster than any of them and they would have to drag her by her hair kicking and screaming before she came anywhere near him. She was stopped by a hand on her door forcing it to remain open.

"It's been months and we haven't gotten anywhere with him. He refuses to say a single word to anyone, even Kakashi. You might be our only chance at getting him to speak."

Kakashi hadn't seen her since that day. To others it may have seemed cold to leave her alone in her time of grief. But Sakura and Kakashi knew each other as much as two people could and she felt no resentment for his absence. Neither were ready to talk and neither ready to listen. He was giving her the option to make the first move. If she called she knew he would be there in a heartbeat. A part of her worried for Kakashi. He was just as broken as herself if not more so. He had once admitted to feeling guilty for being unable to save Sasuke from himself. Naruto was like another sharp kick to a man who had been beaten down mercilessly by the universe. Kakashi hadn't saved Sasuke and the world had seen fit to punish him by taking away his other pupil.

Sakura felt pity for Kakashi it was never his fault. He was a victim to a cruel joke the world had played on him. And Sakura knew the punchline. Sasuke could not be saved. He had tricked them with his pretty face and surly demeanour, letting them think underneath all of his angst and bitterness there was a heart of gold. Perhaps at one time there was. But that heart of gold was rotten on the inside, slowly poisoning him. Changing him in to the creature that made her wake up screaming in the middle of the night. A hellish beast with glowing red eyes and the blood of her loved ones staining his hands. That thing did not need to be saved. It did not need to be questioned by Ibiki. It did not need to be stowed away in Konohas dungeons. It did not need to be treated in a hospital. It did not need to be judged or tried by the council of elders. No. None of that are what it needed.

It needed to be put down like a beast before it could harm anyone else that Sakura loved.

"What is it that needs to be said!? He killed Naruto! Butchered him like it was nothing! Nothing that monster says will change that!" Sakura let out a strangled sob, leaning against the door frame to support herself as her legs began to quake. Her breathing was erratic and she felt as though she couldn't fill her lungs with enough air. As a nurse she recognized the signs of a panic attack but it did little to stop her racing heart and ringing in her ears.

"We need to know what his intentions are. He may be complacent for the moment but this may not always be the case in the future. We can hardly get near him to treat him let alone sedate him. He's maimed more orderlies than I care to mention...I would not ask this of you if there was another option available. You are ninja and your village needs you."

"There is no more Konoha without Naruto." Sakura warbled out, her tone laced with grief and aguish and Ibikis voice seemed garbled and far away.

"Then he has won." Ibiki said softly before turning to leave the melancholic husk of a girl to ponder his words.


	5. Chapter 5

Closer and closer she was pulled by the uniformed men towards a familiar cell. To her left she heard a sharp gasp but she was unable to concentrate on where it had originated from. He was in the building. She could feel it like a suffocating pressure that robbed her of her breath and gripped her heart.

Closer towards the cell she went. She had been in that very cell once before. She had been naive and foolish then. She had walked into that cell fuelled by a brash sense of retribution. Like a fool she had believed that she knew everything that that monster was capable of and she was prepared to face it.

She was an idiot. She knew nothing of what he was capable of. If she had she would have ran as far away from that cell as her legs would take her. For all her gusto and pride she would have ran like a coward had she have known.

"He has won." He had said. Ibiki's words hadn't been the ones to phase her. The man had been a master manipulator. Perhaps he had hoped to spark the self-righteous sense of justice she had once lived by. There was good and there was evil. Like a petulant child she was convinced that good would always triumph. Justice would prevail through all. It had been a comforting sentiment shared during the war. No matter how bad things became or how bleak their prospects looked there had always been the old fable that good will inevitably come out on top. Every soldier lined the battle field without a moments hesitation. Men and women each living out a childhood fantasy of being the hero from a fairy tale. Glorified in future tales as being the force of light to concur over evil. They were the heroes fighting for children we were told by every book and old wives tale that victory was inevitable.

What the tales failed to mention was that not every hero would make it to the end of the story. In war good and evil are redundant. In war there is no rules that say one side always wins. In war there is only death. Sakura knew that Ibiki knew that too. Sasuke had not won. He had only killed enough people to survive.

After two days Sakura had been lulled into a false sense of security. Ibiki had not returned, nor had anyone else mentioned the idea of Sakura going near the prison. When a knock came from her front door she had thought nothing of it. She ignored the sound figuring that Ino would let herself in whether she answered the door or not.

After a moment the knock came again. Sakura felt uneasy at the sound. Most of her callers would simply let themselves in. She hesitantly walked towards the door slowly opening it to reveal a face she had not seen since the war.

"H-hinata." She sputtered.

"Hello Sakura." Hinata softly replied. The Hyuuga girl was dressed impeccably in dark navy kimono. It's design was simple but one could tell it was crafted from the finest of silks. Her long hair draped over her shoulders in its traditional conservative fashion. Pin straight, not a single lock out of place. "May I come in?"

"O-of course." Sakura answered pulling open the door wider to let the other woman pass through.

Gesturing towards a seat in her small humble living room Sakura watched the Hyuuga girl delicately place herself on the ratty red cushion of her couch. The heiress looked sorely out of place in Sakura's simple living space. She had seen the luxury of the Hyuuga compound first hand. The lavish traditional decor and pristine landscapes had made her cramped apartment and secondhand furniture look embarrassingly inadequate. A part of Sakura cringe as Hinata looking every bit a lady, perfect posture and hands neatly folded on her lap, sat daringly close to an old coffee stain on the sofas upholstery.

Hinata seemed unperturbed by the state of Sakura's home. Despite her noble status the girl had always been graciously humble and genuinely good natured, if not a little shy.

Still the girls presence made Sakura uncomfortable.

She had always liked Hinata. The two had never been especially close, but she had thought the girl to be very sweet and had enjoyed her company when given the opportunity. Now things were different.

To anyone possessing a pair of eyes it was painfully obvious that Hinata had born a longstanding affection for Naruto. In true Naruto fashion he had been the only one oblivious to her crush. It had been almost comical in an endearing sort of way to watch the two of them together. Naruto was hopelessly clueless to the timid girls feelings, and she could barely manage to fit a sentence together without turning an alarming shade of red.

Her rosy cheeks and stammering looked like an adorable case of puppy love. But Sakura had a feeling it ran deeper than that. Despite Hinata's meek demeanour and wide doe eyes. It would have been insultingly belittling to write her off as demure and soft spoken.

Hinata was as tough and capable as they came. Her sheltered upbringing had done nothing to make her naive to the horrors of the world. She had loved and lost more than most people could comprehend. Sakura was under no impression that her shiny groomed hair and a neatly pressed kimono meant that the girl was not suffering every bit as much as she was.

Hinata's appearance at her doorstep was no social pleasantry. There was only one thing that connected them enough to warrant a visit in their shared time of grieving. And Sakura was not ready to acknowledge it.

"Would you like some tea? I think I have-"

"Do you know why I'm here Sakura?"

Startled from being cut off by the notoriously polite girl, Sakura paused before giving her a slow nod.

"You didn't come to the funeral." Hinata continued. Her voice barely reached above a whisper but the flat cadence she spoke sounded cold and unusual coming from her.

"No... I didn't."

"He would have come if it had been you."

The words held a truth that cut her like a knife.

"I know." Sakura replied with a crack in her voice. Suddenly she felt unable to meet the ghostly white eyes belonging to the Hyuuga occupying her couch.

"He would have wanted you to be there."

"I- I know that."

"He would have-"

"I KNOW! I KNOW! I KNOW!" Sakura wailed. "I know I should have been there! I know if it had been me things would be different! I wish it had been me! And I know you do too!"

"That's not what I-"

"Why did you come here Hinata? If you're looking for answers or some kind of closure I don't have it! I have nothing to say you want to here!"

At some point tears had begun fill both of their eyes. Hinata's hands trembled in her lap.

"I was angry with you, you know?" The dark haired girl warbled. "I was angry that you had run away from all of it. From the funeral. From the aftermath of the war. From Sas-"

At this Sakura's body jolted and she was filled with rage at the mention of the name.

"DON'T... say that name." Sakura growled through her clenched teeth. Hinata seemed shaken before strengthening her resolve and continuing to speak.

"The man I loved died for that name. S-so I will say it as much as I like."

Sakura glared at the Hyuuga heiress, and was met with a similar glare of her own.

"That man-that-...that thing murdered the man you loved." Sakura spat with disdain laced through her every syllable. "And I watched it happen... So you can be angry at me for running from the funeral and the fallout from the war. But don't you dare brand me a coward for running away from him."

"I've tried to see him. I went to the prison but they refuse to allow me entry. I was told you were the only one permitted to see him."

"God-..Fucking Ibiki.." Sakura groaned.

"If he's someone Naruto thought was worth saving. Worth dying for. Then I think we owe it to him to try saving Sasuke too."

"THAT IS NOT SASUKE IN THERE! THAT IS THE MONSTER WHO KILLED HIM!"

"THEN NARUTO DIED FOR NOTHING!" The hysterical Hyuuga screeched leaping to her feet. "He died so you could hide away and be miserable while the man he called a brother rots in a jail cell!" Hinata let out a broken sob. "If there is any part of you that believes Naruto died fighting for something. Anything. Then at least try fighting too... Naruto never gave up on anything. He showed everyone what the spirit of fire really was... Don't let that die with him too."

Spirit of fire... What a fucking joke.

After Hinata had left Sakura was plagued with turmoil. Looking back she understood the Hyuuga heiress had been desperate to keep a piece of Naruto alive. In her warped state of grief she had twisted herself into believing that this piece was Sasuke's redemption. If only she had known. If only they had all known what was coming.

Still Hinata's pleas to uphold Naruto's idealistic belief Sasuke could be saved had touched her. Guilt consumed her as she thought of the Hyuuga's words. Was she dishonouring Naruto's memory by abandoning the cause he had given his life for?

Seeing Sasuke scared her more than anything. She became physically sick at the very thought.

Naruto was never afraid. Even in the wake of his death Sakura couldn't picture Naruto being afraid.

Sakura wondered if Naruto was looking down on them now. Would he be afraid now? Fear that everything he had done had been in vain.

The thought made her stomach twist and her eyes sting with tears.

Sakura was afraid of Sasuke. But the thought of Naruto looking down on them with regret scared her even more in that moment.

She visibly trembled as she began her walk down into the depths of Konohas dungeons. Some of the guards shot her pitying looks and she silently resented them for it. She did not need their pity. Pity could not raise Naruto from the dead.

A nervous sweat lined her brow and her hands were clammy and feeble. Her fingers felt like gelatine, unable to so much as form a fist let alone resemble the powerhouse they had once been.

Nearing the cell she felt that sickening twisted chakra and it took every part of her being not to turn and run in the other direction. Two guards stood on either side of the cell and from within she could make out a shadowy figure stewing in the corner.

His back was facing her and she was glad for it. She was not sure if she was capable of seeing his face quite yet. She knew that he sensed her. How could he not after once being so intuned to each others chakra signatures. Still he had yet to make a sound or even turn to meet her gaze.

It made her angry that he disregarded her presence so easily, and this anger emboldened her.

"Open the cell." She told the guards evenly.

"I can't do that Miss S-"

"Open the fucking cell or I will pry it open with my own hands." She hissed at the man who had spoken, never taking her eyes off the figure in the darkest corner of the enclosure. It was a stupid and bold move. Like walking into a lions den, but Sakura had come far enough that she was determined to get an answer from the imprisoned man of her nightmares.

The guards shot one another a hesitant glance. Uncomfortable with the breach of protocol. The same man opened his mouth once more tor refuse her demand before being cut off by a new figure entering the enclosure.

"Open the cell for her." Ibiki ordered the two men as he came to stand behind the much shorter pink haired figure.

At the command of a superior the guards reluctantly began to release various seals and allow for entrance into Sasuke's cell.

No longer having the bars to separate her from her monster Sakura's trembling reached new heights. Shakily taking small steps to enter the small room, she felt as though she were merely a bystander to her own movements. It was s though she were not in control of the steps that brought her closer to the man she had once cared for so much. The man who now terrified and sickened her.

She stopped only a foot away from his form. She could make out the finer details in the stitching of the crest seen into the collar of shirt. The crest that marked him as a member of his cursed clan. His stupid, wicked, evil fucking clan fed and bred hatred and the world had suffered for it.

She stood there in silence, waiting for something... anything. While gathering her own courage to speak.

"Sakura." His voice seemed to boom and rattle against the cells walls despite being spoken softly. Almost a whisper you had to strain your ears to here. Sakura however heard it clear as a bell. His voice was raspy from the lack of use but its familiar cadence and stoic tone was unmistakable. Her name had always sounded different coming across his lips. She had once relished in the way he said it. Now it only made her squirm and shiver with fear.

The sound of her name coming off his tongue rattled her to the very bone and she struggled to regain her bearings and recall the questions Ibiki had pushed her to ask.

"A-are...Are you planning to bring harm to Konoha?" She stuttered out pathetically. Her voice shaking almost as much as her tiny frame.

It happened quicker than any human eye was capable of seeing. His movements were disturbingly fast, like lightening itself. Within an instant Sasuke was standing mere inches from her. Unnervingly tall he dwarfed her tiny form as he towered over her. The upper portion of his face was covered by a blindfold littered with seals but even with it Sakura could feel the searing burn of his gaze upon her. A cold hand rested on the area where her neck met her collar bone and she was sure that he could feel her pulse racing against it.

Sakura remained paralyzed with horror letting out an involuntary whimper and choking on her very breath. The other ninja in the room jolted into action when they realized the new proximity of the two figures, only to be stopped by Sasuke's words.

"Take one step closer and I'll snap her neck."

The other occupants of the room froze at his words. Palpable tension seeped through the air as no one moved a single muscle for fear of him acting upon his threat.

"You've become thinner." he hummed. Letting his digits gently curl around the base of her fragile neck. Smooth to the touch and strikingly pale, as all the colour had drained from Sakura. His index finger rested softly upon a familiar pressure point and it felt as though his touch burned and seared into her flesh.

"...You're shaking." He said casually as though commenting on the weather. Oblivious or uncaring to the anxiety of those around him.

"Are you afraid of me Sakura?"

Yes. She most certainly was. She had never been more afraid of anything than of the shackled man before her.

"N-no." She gasped out with a high pitched squeak tears of terror beginning to leak down the expanse of her cheeks. droplets landing upon the hand at her throat.

"...Lying doesn't suit you Sakura." He mused letting his thumb begin to brush back and forth against her clavicle. The accompanied action reminded her of a master gently chiding a pet of sorts.

"You- You killed him." Sakura said with a choked sob.

"He had to die." Sasuke returned evenly. Seemingly unperturbed by the frantic womans tears and anguish.

"You killed him!" She wailed. Her grief blinded her rational thoughts and she raised her hands to beat against the hard torso in front of her.

The other occupants tensed as they waited for the foreboding ninja to react to the assault being made on his chest. They all silently feared for the safety of the tiny woman flailing her fists without abandon against the threatening Uchiha. The orderlies had not been able to so much as come near him without fear of losing a limb. With a flick of his wrist he could easily break the fragile neck he held in his hand.

Still he remained docile to her aggression. Seemingly unphased in the face of her assault to his person.

"It should have been you! He wasn't supposed to die!"

Her frantic blows ceased almost instantly as she felt him lower himself to place his lips next to her ear. His warm breath against her flesh sent an awful shiver crawling up her spine.

"Then he should have been stronger." Sasuke whispered. "He wasn't powerful enough to do what needs to be done... But I am."

"You're sick." She said croaked out through her tears. In a demented way she almost pitied the twisted power hungry thing Sasuke had become.

"You'll understand one day. I'm going to do what Naruto couldn't and reshape the ninja world."

"You're mad!" Sakura cried with a gut wrenching sob. Sasuke was beyond help from anyone. Silently she begged Naruto for forgiveness. She had failed him. This thing masquerading as Sasuke was not worthy of redemption.

"Sakura..." He said meeting fear stricken jade eyes flooded with tears. Slowly he raised to fingers towards her brow.

"Thank you." He whispered. Sakura felt her head whip back violently and her entire body followed with it. She was thrown out of the cell like a rag doll only to be caught by the nearest guard. The guards partner quickly sprang into action slamming the cell door shut once she was safely out of harms way.

Disoriented and disturbed by his words Sakura faintly heard Ibiki calling out to her. He shook her shoulders to try and stir her out of the trance she had been placed in.

The only thing she was able to feel in that moment was a burning sensation in her throat as she ripped it raw with her own screams.


	6. Chapter 6

It had been sixteen days since the team of mercenaries had thrown her in that cell. Locked away in the subterranean dungeon that had once been Konoha's loosely termed 'jail'. Official terminology had encouraged referring to the underground prison in more flowery language such as; 'holding cells' or 'contained housing' and a variety of other terms that were more befitting of Konoha's pristine reputation.

However having been trapped in the 'contained housing' for nearly a week, Sakura could not find a more befitting terminology to describe the place other than 'hell'.

The weeks seemed like months in the windowless cell. Her only method of gauging the duration of her imprisonment was through the, what she presumed were, daily visits of random lackeys sent to bring her food. They never spoke and never lingered. The interaction lasted all of a minute as they carelessly shoved a tray of unappetizing gruel at the foot of the bars and retrieved the remains of her meal from the previous day. Her arms were just small enough that it allowed her to reach through through the metal rods housing her and shovel the tasteless slop into her mouth. Although most of her meals remained largely untouched. Her appetite was already in a pitiful state and her general anxiety made it a chore to keep anything down.

Upon completion of their task the guard would quickly turn on their heel and march away, leaving her alone until the next visit. The never acknowledged her in anyway, likely having been ordered to ignore her entirely. Sakura had tried to get a rise out of one or two of them. She asked questions about the future her imprisonment, studying their faces meticulously in hopes of gaining information. Goading the soldiers with insults in hopes of inspiring a reaction had garnered little more than an annoyed sneer in her direction. She had tried initially to appeal to the humanity of an individual guard but could hardly build a relationship in such a small time span. One of her younger visitors, a boy that could have been no older than 14, had graced her with a tiny smile as he gently set down her tray. Still he remained silent to her prodding only offering her a pitying glance before turning away.

Ultimately even if she had managed to guilt the poor schmuck into helping her it would hardly matter as the guard who delivered her rations were never the same. She wondered idly if the barrage of changing faces was meant to be a display of the sheer numbers of ninja under Sasuke's control.

When her plea for sympathy had failed she resorted to aggressive confrontation. She screeched and threatened the nameless men, slamming her fists against the bars and shaking them until she heard the metal groan as it rattled in her grasp. The guards however seemed unconcerned. They both knew that even if she managed to breakout of her cage she would never see daylight before being recaptured by the squadron of shinobi roaming the corridors of the building.

Sakura knew the guards were there. Even if she was too weak to sense their chakra, she knew they were there. Her isolation was plagued by a seemingly unending silence. It had made her hearing sharp to any noise that might disturb her bubble of quietude. Occasionally she could here the murmurs of chatter between guards posted outside the entrance to her 'contained housing'. However, she could never distinguish any words from behind the door, only to listen to the tone of their cadence. She had come to familiarize herself with two of the voices most commonly posted at her door.

One belonged to a gruff sounding man, presumably in his mid to late 30's. His muted chattering sounded gravely and deepens through age. He rarely ever spoke but when he did his mumbling was curt and to the point. Contrastingly his usual accompaniment was significantly chattier. The voice offered Sakura a constant flow of muffled jabbering that she did not necessarily dislike. Entertainment was severely lacking within the walls of her cell and she would sometimes let her mind invent a dialogue to accompany the babbling sounds. To her embarrassment she had mentally developed a rather detailed storyline between the two guards. A sort of soap opera only she was privy to. In her fantasy the talkative guard was currently dealing with a misbehaved pet and was seeking advice from his gruff coworker. She hadn't quite decided exactly what sort of pet it should be. Perhaps something exotic like a snake?

Immediately after the thought carelessly entered her mind she cringed and opted to abandon the plot altogether. Perhaps she would weave a new tale centred around the older guard. Perhaps his wife was a terrible cook yet he was unable to tell her. His poor diet attributed to his grumpy behaviour.

She knew these flippant musings were childish and stupid at best. However, solitude was inherently boring and pathetic as it was she would take whatever entertainment she could find.

Mostly she heard the groaning of pipes embedded in the walls that moaned every time water worked its way through the buildings outdated plumbing system. She often suspected one of these ancient pipes had burst somewhere nearby. A consistent pattering of water smacking against concrete could be heard sometimes following the creaking of a pipe. The rhythmic drips were akin to a faucet that had not been properly turned off, and she found the noise to be annoying to say the least. The sound of the neglected leak drove her damn near mad during what she had deemed was sleeping hours. Not that she was gifted a proper rest anyways.

The steady drips of water were hardly the primary reason behind her lack of sleep. She could manage the annoyance. Even the ratty cot she had been provided in the corner of the room was manageable to sleep on. She had slept on worse.

It was the sound of footsteps that gripped her with anxiousness and paranoia. The muted slapping of shoe souls against the stone floors seized her entire body with fear. Her mind spiralled into paranoia that it would be _his_ footsteps that treaded towards her.

However, her logical mind reasoned that his footsteps would be silent. He was always unnervingly swift. Without even meaning to his movements were naturally that of a ninja. Silent and deadly. He could be inches away from her and she would remain ignorant to his proximity until he chose to make her aware of such. Like so many of his victims she would never hear him coming. This reminder disturbed her like no other and she would spend the remainder of the night with her back pressed against the cell walls. Her bloodshot eyes, heavy with exhaustion, fixated on the entryway. Her body's crippling desire for rest took a backseat as her erratic fear of his approach took precedence.

She could go days before the strain became to much and unknowingly allowed her self to slip into a desperately needed slumber. She would later awaken horrified that she had allowed her guard to slip. Dreading the possibilities that could have occurred in her moment of vulnerability. Her mind would launch into a new bout of paranoia and the vicious cycle would commence anew.

Today was one of those days where sleep would evade her once more as angst flooded her system. The bars seemed to grow closer together and encroach upon her, making the cramped space unbearably suffocating to its lone occupant. Her gaze was hawk like upon the old metal door that resided just beyond the rusted metal bars that housed her. She had come to know that door like the back of her hand. Every dent and chip was engrained in her mind. Every screw that held it together was more familiar to her than the village she once bled for that lay just beyond it.

That door was a barrier between her and the monster who had shut her behind it. Every time it opened to allow passage for the poor sod carting her meal set her on edge. Because she knew that one day it would open and he would be behind it. She dreaded that day more than she dreaded the thought of being a prisoner to that door for the rest of her miserable life.

As if the universe sensed her thoughts and sought to play a cruel joke, she heard a tell tale creaking noise. Cracks of light emerged as the door was propped open.

Her heart raced at a concerning pace, each beat that thrummed in her chest physically wracked her quivering torso. Her meal had already been delivered for today, she was sure of it. It was impossible that a full day had passed even with her shaky grasp the concept of time.

This was it. This was the day she had been dreading.

Her eyes had become sensitive to light and she squinted as the heavy metal barrier was fully pushed aside. Her retinas ached slightly as they adjusted to the shift in luminance in the tiny space. She was only able to distinguish the silhouette of the approaching figure.

The figure seemed to be on the shorter side, not absurdly so, but definitely shorter than the average male. The sharp clacking that accompanied foot steps indicated the presence of shoes bearing a heel of sorts. Giving Sakura the impression the wearer was likely female. Her suspicions were confirmed by a sharp intake of breath that sounded distinctly feminine and as her eyes adjusted she was able to make out long red locks swaying whimsically around the white lab coat sported by the woman.

"I didn't think it would really be you." The woman said in a breathy tone as she appraised the broken form of the girl behind the bars that separated the two.

Sakura nearly failed to register the woman's words. Her mind tripped over itself to piece together the statement. Out of practice from being denied verbal communication for so long. Despite the rare luxury of conversation her foggy sleep deprived mind only allowed her to give a weary grunt in response to the woman.

"I thought you'd just be another fake. But it's really you isn't it. I'd know that face anywhere." The red head said clicking her tongue as if to make her point. "I see you kept the pink hair. Would've thought you'd dye it or something. Gutsy move. A bit stupid but gutsy." The woman continued crossing her arms as she stared down the dirty mop of pink hair. "Not that I wouldn't recognize you with out it, but still." She finished.

The woman's cavalier attitude began to irk Sakura and she bit down an insult opting to let the obnoxious woman talk her self into a hole. Perhaps she might pick up something useful.

"I'm surprised you were so easily captured after all this time. To be honest I had written you off as dead. But then again he's always right about these sort of things, even now. Kind of annoying really." The red head scoffed.

At the haughty dismissal of her capture Sakura snapped at the woman.

"Did you come to simply make redundant statements. Or is there a purpose for you being here?"

The woman gave a dry chuckle before bending down to meet the other girls level.

"I remember you being nicer, but I guess if I was in your shoes I'd be a bit of a bitch too."

"Fuck you!" Sakura barked glaring into red eyes shielded by matching spectacles. The rogue colouring of her iris's made Sakura's gut twist but the glasses sparked a recognition. At the insult the woman rolled her eyes before giving her irritable counterpart a knowing smirk.

"You don't remember me do you?" She drawled amusedly, unbefitting of being victim to the other girls hostility. "Well I suppose we only really met the once, but I'm sure you remember that day just as clearly as I do." The woman finished in a somber tone.

At the womans words Sakura searched the recesses of her memories and dawned a look of recognition as she placed a name to the face behind those witchingly familiar glasses. The last time she had been so close to the woman the red head had looked significantly different. Her skin had been a few shades paler and blood had tinged her lips a devilish rogue. The woman seemed much taller now standing before her, hardly resemblant of the broken figure crumpled in a heap and knocking on deaths door.

"...Karin." Sakura mumbled more to herself than the female before her.

"So you do remember." Karin replied. "Good. This will be easier if we can forego introductions."

"What are you doing here?" Karin heard the girl grumble. With a resigned sigh at the girls question she began to craft an explanation.

"I've been assigned to-"

"No, what the fuck are you doing here?" Sakura repeated louder as if raising her voice would see to a proper answer for her questioning.

"I don't-?" Karin replied confused at the girls outburst.

"He stabbed you through the chest!" She hollered. Her voice breaking at points from its previous lack of use. "He practically killed you! He would have killed you if I wasn't there! And now you're here! One of his minions!"

"Shut up! You don't know-"

Still Sakura continued near hysterical at this point.

"He killed you and you went crawling back to him! You let him become this! You helped him become this! What the fuck is wrong with you?!"

"SHUT THE HELL UP!" Karin screeched, growing red in the face at Sakura's accusations.

"I should have let you die! No! I should have killed you myself! One less soldier supporting this madness!"

Karin gave the girl a scathing look before hissing in a low tone,

"Bit late for that now isn't it?"

"You're pathetic!"

"Hah!" Karin guffawed. "Coming from the girl in the prison cell."

"At least I have my pride!" Came the jailed girls retort. "At least I played no part in supporting that monster!"

Something in Karin seemed to snap at her words.

"Pride!? What good is pride locked away in a jail cell!? You think I want things to be like this!" She shrieked, her arms flailed erratically to gesture to their surroundings. "I was given the same choice as everyone else! Which is no choice at all! Join or die. What good is pride if I'm dead! Look where your _pride_ has gotten you!"

"My pride allowed me a life free of catering to the whims of a maniac! My pride allowed me to fight against this madness! You chose the easy way out!" Sakura growled, her voice thick with bitterness.

"I chose to survive Sakura! It is not the life I wanted but as I'm sure you know it is far better than the alternative!" Karin barked as she motioned to the decrepit prison. "There is no fighting this. If you were smart you would accept that and move on. This is our world now. Play by the rules and you can have a life here."

"Is this your attempt to get me to play nice." Sakura scoffed. "I'd rather rot in this cage."

"You saved my life once. This is me trying to return the favour." Karin whispered solemnly, her eyes beseeching the kunoichi to see reason. "They're going to start the interrogation soon you know. I've been sent here to confirm your identity so they can begin the process."

"Why couldn't he have walked down here to do it himself?" Sakura spat acidly. "Why hasn't he shown his face!? Is this a way to torment me!?"

Karin glanced over her shoulder towards the guards stationed outside the room before speaking in a hushed tone. As if she were sharing a dirty secret that was forbidden to speak of.

"He... He's not well these days. I shouldn't be telling you this but most days I don't think he even realizes you're down here..."

Karin mentally recalled her encounter with Sasuke the previous day.

He had summoned her back to Konoha through a letter a week or so ago. The letter had not disclosed a reason behind her summoning but regardless she made haste to gather her bearings and depart for the village accompanied by a squadron. She heard her travelling companions hushed whispers speculating on the reason behind their voyage. Rumors circulated of a captured spy. Some claimed it to be an enemy general from Cloud. While others were positive it was the leader of some rogue faction or another.

"No, no, no! You're all wrong!" A ninja by the name of Ryuu had spoken up one day. He was a cocky brat and Karin held a quiet distaste for his rowdy nature. It reminded her too much of Suigetsu. Still the gossip made the long journey go by faster, and she half heartedly tuned into his boasting.

"It's a kunoichi they picked up in some po-dunk town on the boarder. My cousin's got a friend who was part of the squad that brought her in see!" Ryuu said with a smirk, idly twirling a kunai as he spoke.

"So if it's just some random rogue why are we getting called in?" His companion retorted with a tinge doubt lacing his tone.

"Well here's the weird part... Apparently the team who found her went to get her processed, you know all that legal mumbo jumbo, but when they got there they got orders to take her straight to home base. I heard she put up a hell of a fight too when they got there. My cousins mate got a nice shiner on his ribs cause o' that chick. And my cousins buddy's a big guy too. Dame musta had a hell of an arm."

"That's why I won't date kunoichi's man. You piss em' off and they'll tear you to pieces." The other man joked.

Karin had barley raised a brow at Ryuu's tale but refused to speculate on the circumstances of her trip. It wasn't until the shinobi continued to blabber to his teammate that she truly paid attention.

"You haven't even heard the craziest part of this whole thing yet!" Ryuu exclaimed excitedly as he waved his arms for his captivated audience. " Turns out buddy got off lucky with a bruise. The squad captain ended up loosing an arm!"

"She ripped off a guys arm?!"

"No! No! Not her! ... _HE_ did it..." Ryuu said letting his voice fall to a whisper.

" _Him!?"_

"Yeah apparently the captain had it out for the girl and roughed her up a bit on the way there. Well when the captain went in to give his report to him apparently he walked in with two arms and left with one."

"You're full of shit!"

"Swear on my life! Apparently the whole thing was a bloody mess. No one knows exactly what went down in that room but it messed the guy up. Guy's down an arm and all twisted in the head now."

"What do you mean twisted?"

Ryuu responded in a hushed whisper

" _He_ did something to him. Captain left the room holding the arm he lost in his good one and was rambling some nonsense. No one could get anything out of him for weeks. He just kept saying; 'Arms... I'm not proud of these arms...' Over and over again."

Karin felt her blood run cold at his words.

'It couldn't be..." She thought. 'After all this time.'

"She's still out there." He had once told Karin in a rare moment of idle contemplation.

"Who?" She had asked.

Ignoring her question he continued to muse to himself as though she weren't present.

"I can feel her. She's still out there..."

"Do you mean-"

"Still out there..." He continued dazedly cutting off her words. It was clear to her now who he was referring to. For Sasuke there was only one person that could be 'her'. Karin had silently thought to herself that the girl was more than likely dead or seeking refuge on the other side of the world far from his reach. She kept such thoughts to herself though. It was foolish to voice things regarding this particular topic to Sasuke. Karin was unsure if he even realized he was voicing his musings aloud.

"I'll find her..." He muttered. "...I'll find her..."

She couldn't be sure if the captive described by Ryuu was in fact Sakura. It could have been idle hearsay muttered between the more gossip inclined soldiers. However, the pitiful captain's fate truly sounded like a byproduct of Sasuke's handiwork. And these days such a violent reaction could only be sparked by a small number of transgressions. The lines seemed to come together in Karin's mind. Biting her tongue she forced herself to withhold preconceived notions until speaking with their leader.

However, upon entering his office she realized that the rumours held far more truth than originally suspected.

It broke her heart everytime she had the chance to come face to face with Sasuke. He had become such a twisted reflection of the boy she once knew. His eyes were painted with dark circles that screamed he was barely sleeping. They danced in and out of lucidity, only offering a dull spark recognition at her presence.

"You summoned me my lord." Karin began in stiff tone. Opting for formality despite their shared history. Sasuke was unpredictable these days and the years spent travelling with him in their youth meant little to the ruthless husk of a dictator before her now.

"Karin." He mumbled and to her chagrin she felt her heart swell at his acknowledgment. She consciously sought to burry these feelings when they arose despite herself. It would be unendingly foolish to love a man like the present Sasuke. Dangerous even, and doomed to end in heartbreak. Still old habits die hard.

"You requested for me Sasuke?"

He appeared confused for a moment. His mind seemed to escape him and a long pause of heavy silence fell between the two.

"Aah..." He drawled lazily. "I need you to confirm something for me. The guard outside the door will take you there and then you will report back to me yourself."

Karin nodded and headed towards the door but in a moment of brashness she halted herself. Curiosity getting the better of her.

"Is.. Is it her?"

Her question went unanswered and the man seemed to not even realize she was still there. His eyes were glazed over and his lips appeared to be muttering something without letting out a sound.

She jumped when she finally heard him speak but his words only disturbed her, as she worried for his mental state.

"I'll find her... She's out there I can feel it... I'll find her..."


	7. Chapter 7

Drowning brought about a strange flurry of sensations Sakura had come to discover.

It began with a determination to hang on to precious spurts of oxygen. Her rational mind urged her to embrace a forced calm as she willed her body to make the most of what little breath was lingering in her lungs. Yet, no matter how many times she found herself plunged beneath the surface of troph of water, held firmly in place by the unrelenting grip of her tormentor, her rationality was replaced by an instinct to panic. The will to survive was ingrained into her very core and as oxygen depleted fear would set in and consume her.

Those were the worst moments. Her lungs burned and her body twitched and thrashed involuntarily. She knew they would never allow her to truly die. Merely let her teeter over the edge of the precipice that separated life and death.

Her body would scream for oxygen with every fibre of its being. Every cell begging for air. It was torture. But once the burning in her lungs peaked and she could no longer hold on to consciousness, she was granted a strange moment of bliss.

Perhaps it was just a result of her brains lack of oxygen, but for a small instance she was euphoric. Dangling on the cusp of death she allowed the water to flood her system and revelled in the peaceful numb as everything faded to black.

'Take me.' She yearned with her last vestiges of consciousness. Death offered such a sweet release and just when she felt herself fall into the eternal void she was yanked from the darkness to awaken once more. Her lungs screamed with exertion as they hacked up bouts of water while simultaneously gasping for air.

Her vision constituted of mainly blurred shapes and her ears rang.

"Where are the others?" Were normally the first words she was able to distinguish. It was always the same question. And she always gave the same answer.

"Go to hell." She would sputter between haggard breaths and strenuous coughs as she forced the remaining water from her lungs.

Her reply had become the catalyst that renewed the vicious cycle once more and her head was promptly shoved into the water once more.

This pattern would continue for hours on end before her tormentors would eventually resign themselves seeing her exhausted figure. Her exhausted frame was dragged back to her cell barely coherent. Sakura was only left with a lingering promise that the torture would resume once again the next day.

Drowning was a clear favourite method for the men assigned to interrogate her. Occasionally they would experiment with the temperature of the water. She distinctly remembered an occasion where she was forced under a fridged stream of ice water for hours on end until her lips turned blue and ligaments went entirely numb.

If they felt particularly creative the interrogators would inject her with what she recognized to be a mild toxin. Leaving her alone to suffer through fever and sickening waves of nausea. In the height of her delirium brought on from the illness they would pester her with questions in hopes she may slip and give something away that would be useful to them.

'Fools.' She thought. Even if she felt inclined to cater to their constant barrage of questioning, she knew nothing that would be of value to them. Any knowledge of rebel operations she once possessed, was years old and the rebellion itself had disbanded long ago. She knew nothing of the remaining members. Most she had presumed dead, let alone where they currently resided. But she would be damned if she let them know that.

"What do you know of the rebellion?"

"Go to hell."

Let them waste their time questioning her about things beyond her own knowledge.

Sometimes they would demand for her surrender to subservience beneath their leadership.

"Do you submit yourself to the new new world order?"

She would rather die.

"Fuck your order."

And the torture would resume.

The more sadistic of the guards would sometimes threaten her with unimaginable horrors if she refused to bend to their inclinations. One man in particular was noticeably exuberant in his taunting. He would craft vicious images of gruesome fates to befall her, promising that the next time they met he would bring them to fruition.

However, he had yet to lay a single finger on Sakura despite is clear desire to see her suffer. In fact the interrogators had hardly left her with so much as a single bruise. They never hit her, sliced or maimed her in any form. Their torture mainly operated around methods that left her unblemished for the most part.

She had suspicions that they were not permitted to leave her with any sort of mark. And one day she had decided to test this theory.

Walking towards the interrogation room she began to plot the details of her experiment despite it being a fairly primitive plan.

She was seated at a table located in the centre of the room. Her interrogator seated on the opposing side. A troph of water was visible just over his shoulder and she took a moment to eye the offending basin with disdain.

"Where are the remaining rebels?" The man asked in a bland tone, already expecting her biting response as was customary to the twisted routine they had established over the course of her captivity. However he was momentarily jarred, as she proceeded to break their familiar cycle by forgoing her usual venomous retort in favour of letting a strange smile wash over her features.

The two stared at one another for a moment. Confusion furrowing his brow as he watched her lips twist into a sickeningly sweet smile that had no rational reason for gracing her expression. The sugary expression unnerved him as it was accompanied by a blazoning fire that dwelled in her jade green eyes.

In an instant her smile seemed to stretch further, blooming into a full blown grin before she unleashed chaos.

Without an ounce of hesitation she reared back before proceeding to slam her face against the solid steel table of the table top. The impact creating a wicked crack that made her see stars.

The occupants of the room were wracked with paralysis by the sheer shock over what she had done.

Their astonishment allowed her another opportunity to once more throw her head back before hurling it against the metal furniture again. Through the haze of pain she heard a satisfying crack signalling her efforts had reached bone.

The guards sprang into action as she fought through her concussed state to attempt another blow. Some hollered for her to stop while others hissed profanity as they fought to restrain her. But Sakura was hardly finished and began to struggle in their grip. She violently twisted her limbs against their hold until she heard deep pop followed instantly by searing pain as she dislocated her joints. Her jagged nails were unkempt and proved to be highly effective tools for ripping through the layers of the skin she was able to reach.

"STOP HER! Grab her arms men!" One of them shouted to another man struggling to get a proper hold on her violent wriggling form.

"Knock her out!" Another cried before she felt a sharp jab to her neck that propelled her into unconsciousness. In the last vestiges of her lucidity she was able to make out the panicked tone of one of her detainers.

"Shit! What do we do?! He's going to kill us!"

"Calm down!" The commanding officer barked. Though he too held a shaky tone. "G-get her back to the cell and then we can call for a medic. They'll have her fixed up within the hour and then we can decide on how to proceed."

"He'll want to know about this..." One of the soldiers muttered, his tone tinged with anxiousness.

"Send one of the messengers to deliver a report after she's been cleaned up. We'll have someone posted by her cell for when she comes to incase she acts out again." The officer mumbled, crafting a rough plan of action as he rambled along. "Get a guard to stand watch in case she comes to and decides to pull this again. If need be have her transferred to a padded cell in the psyche ward and fitted with a straight jacket."

"He's not going to be happy about this.." The anxious guard blubbered as he began to work himself into the beginnings of a panic.

"Stop your snivelling and get it done!" The officer barked at the mans simpering. "Tell the medics to bring that red-headed gal with them." He added as an after thought before storming out of the room while his lackeys scampered at his heels, dragging the unconscious girl in tow.

When Sakura awoke it was to the familiar shrill tone of Karin. Chewing out some poor medic as they scrambled about to follow the orders being barked out by the red head.

"Let the bandages soak in the salve before changing them and get me some fresh water! I don't know what you expect me to do with a dirt bowl of-" The fiery woman halted her tangent as she noticed her charge begin to stir. Mercifully sparing the medic from any further verbal battery, as they swiftly ceased the opportunity to fumble out of the room to fetch the requested provisions.

Pale lashes began to flutter as Sakura slowly began to come out of her forcibly induced state of rest.

"Oh good. You're awake." Karin said flatly, tone dripping with sarcasm. The red head shot the groggy prisoner an unimpressed sneer before she resumed prodding at the rosette's injuries. A particularly sharp jab caused her to grunt in pain. However any sympathy was lost on Karin as she jabbed the same spot once again in a fit of pettiness. Causing the injured girl to give a heavy groan.

"That was a very stupid thing you did." Karin spat out as she continued to exam the wounds non too gently. "What the hell were you thinking?"

"Just... testing a... theory." Came the raspy grumbled reply, followed by a hiss of pain as Karin began to exam the swelling around her face.

"Well I hope your little experiment was worth it. They're going to make your life hell after that stunt you pulled."

Sakura gave a bitter chuckle, although regretted it almost immediately afterwards as the dry laughter only tweaked the aches and pains littered through out her body.

She gave a wheezy gasp before grimacing up at her involuntary healer.

"They can't lay a finger on me. We both know it."

Karin gave her a scowl, mildly irked by the unspoken truth in her words. After Sakura's little display of chaos they were both undoubtably aware of Sakura's designated immunity.

"Maybe they can't hurt you physically but they're a spiteful bunch. Don't think their aren't other ways they can make you suffer."

"Let them try." Sakura scoffed.

Rolling her eyes at the girls guff Karin gave a sharp click of her tongue before carrying on in a casual tone almost as if they were discussing the weather rather than a foreboding torture sentence.

"I hear they are thinking about throwing you in the looney bin. Tell me, what size do you take in straight jackets?" She said acerbically,letting some of her pettier side shine through to provoke her brazen patient.

"Why would it even matter? Whether they hit me or they don't I won't tell them anything." Sakura seemed to ponder dreamily, flinching every odd moment or so as a particularly tender wound was inspected. "They've only given me an advantage. Now that I know that, the second I'm able to I'll just do it all over again."

"Personally I think you could do with a good smack to that forehead of yours, but clearly it still hasn't done you much good." Karin grumbled as she focused on her task of bandaging the girl. "They won't give you the chance to do it again, you have to know that don't you?"

"I know."

And it was true. She would more than likely be under strict surveillance in a stark white room with cushioned walls. If Sasuke had ordered that she was to remain unscathed, every precaution would be implemented for her to remain as such. But now she knew something she hadn't before.

For whatever reason Sasuke wanted her to remain alive and unharmed. And what Sasuke wanted, Sakura wanted to ensure he didn't get it. Then and there she vowed to do everything in her power to oppose his will no matter the cost.

"After you're all fixed up it's padded walls for you from here on out," Karin continued. "The sharpest thing you're ever going to see is a spoo-"

A loud screech followed a sharp crack as Sakura swiftly forced her injured body upwards and slammed her forehead into the bridge of Karins nose.

The collision sent blood rushing down the womans face and the glasses flew from her nose and shattered as they impacted the floor.

"YOU CRAZY BITCH!" Karin hollered clutching her hands to her nose, stinging tear welled up in the corner of her eyes. Her face went rouge as blood rushed beneath her skin to quell the injured area and was ignited by her sheer anger.

Clutching her face she scampered away from the volatile woman who remained strangely silent, a bruise forming on her forehead, though she paid it no mind.

Coincidently the unlucky medic had made a timely return after fetching the requested items only to be met with the rather peculiar scene of two injured parties. One stoically silent, the other livid and hurling profanities. Though the slurs sounded garbled and nasally from the gushing blood and almost assuredly broken nasal passages.

"Miss Karin I've brought the- W-what happened here?!"

"The bitch is crazy! That's what happened!" Karin screeched at the medic finding a new outlet for her rage at being assaulted.

"Should I get m-more bandages?" The bewildered medic blurted as they attempted to make sense of the chaos they had stumbled into.

"No! I'm done with this psycho bitch! I'm leaving! You deal with this! I'm not putting up with this shit! I'm done!" The redhead bellowed in her angry tirade as she launched herself away from Sakura and out of the room slamming the door behind her with as much force as she could.

The thunderous bang of the door closing caused the perplexed medic to jump and an eery silence settled over the room in the redheads hostile wake. Had Sakura been of a more forgiving nature she would feel sympathy for the medic who looked positively petrified at the thought of approaching her. Although it seemed failing to do as Karin asked was an equally terrifying prospect that eventually won out after some consideration and the medic cautiously began to approach.

Sakura remind docile as the medic skittishly tended to her wounds, not making a sound the entire time.

In Karins furious exit she had failed to notice the bits of glass that littered the floor from her broken spectacle frames. They had of course been promptly cleared away by the medic, who had failed to notice the piece of glass hidden Sakura currently had pressed to the roof of her mouth.


	8. Chapter 8

They watched her closely now. Diligently so. In the windowless cushioned walls lining her padded cell she did not need to see them to know that. A red dot flickered on the camera placed within the top left corner of her chamber. Its sole glossy black lens seemed to follow her every which way she went in the limited confines of the stark white walls. Staring into the device was like staring into a void, undoubtably linking her to a guard stationed behind a monitor. Tasked to sit for hours on end eyeballing her slightest movements until another was brought in to replace him. She imagined it was a rather bleak responsibility that seemed to drag on for more time than had actually passed. She could hardly boast being anything remotely entertaining or interesting for her appointed audience to observe.

Predictably the invasiveness of being constantly watched unnerved and irked her despite being unable to see her viewer as he could her. However, she was surprised to discover that she felt strangely dehumanized being victim to constant scrutiny. It made her feel like a test subject being studied in a lab somewhere. Like one of her rats she had once used to aid in her preliminary trails for development of various vaccines. She would spend hours watching the animals skitter about after she had injected them. Often taking notes that would aid in progressing to human trials. She felt some-what guilty for her behaviour towards the creatures, now able to empathize with their pitiful circumstance.

Mercifully she had not been fitted with a straight jacket to accompany her new abode. Though appreciative she doubted that this was due to any form of benevolence on the guards part. Perhaps the garment would only become another bothersome upkeep in the routine of her new settlement. Although she had no misconceptions they would hesitate to utilize the bindings if she proved to be committed to self inflicted harm. Since arriving she had yet to cause a fuss, but her current passivity was by no means grounds for being perceived as complacency. Both she and her chaperones doubted it would truly last long.

Sakura was unsure if she preferred the recent adjustments of her captivity. It was difficult for her to appreciate the comparisons between the two cells. Some may have regarded the exchange as an upgrade of sorts, despite being awarded under the influence of her violent transgressions. Pristine, plushy walls seemed an obvious improvement from the cold steel bars that sprouted from dank and weathered stone lining the surface of the gloomy prison. However, she found she disliked the softness of the padding against her back while she slept, having grown used to the rough terrain of her old cell. She strangely missed the rust along the bars that gave off a musty smell. The various stages of decomposition around the room had given her a sense of scenery and character, as off putting as it was. The blinding, unblemished white of the new walls burned her eyes under the harsh fluorescent bulbs. The room itself carried a bleak sensation of nothingness. The walls were bare, barring the meticulously symmetrical grooves between the seams of their padding. The air smelt of nothing. From beyond its walls she heard nothing. Look upwards into the single light fixture until it stung her eyes and made her vision blur until she saw spots of white nothing. The room was a blank slate. A clean sheet. Completely neutral. And within its walls she felt... nothing. The change in room was still just another cage to her, its spongey floors against her bare toes did little to circumvent that.

Her room had not been the only thing changed. It appeared that along with her change in atmosphere, the usual regiment of interrogation tactics was similarly modified. It seemed that the guards had decided to forgo their initial efforts to physically force an answer out of her. Seeming to realize that she would not break from being submerged in water or fighting a fevers, anew strategy had begun to take its place. Aligning with the tone of recent events her interrogators had begun to implement a more psychological approach in their methods.

Spear heading this campaign was a face Sakura vaguely recognized.

A man by the name of Jin Nakamura had formerly been a senior member of Konoha's interrogation sector. He had once apprenticed under Ibiki in his early days, before garnering a mildly notorious reputation for himself once the tutelage had ended. He was mainly regarded for his unessecarily brutal tactics, that flirted with the line bordering out right sadism. Some described him as having an unsettling willingness for adopting less than ethical means of psychological manipulation, and while this may have granted him a reputation, it was often accompanied by a distaste for his methods.

Ino, who had occasionally consolidated with the interrogation unit, had once mentioned that Jin's unsavoury practices had inadvertently halted any further progression in his career. While no one could deny his effectiveness in producing results, his clear aptitude for the interrogation industry was over shadowed by concern for liabilities resulting from his unsettling penchant for cruelty. Ino had been particularly disturbed one evening after assisting in one of Jin's sessions. The man seemed to take great pleasure in breaking down the mental fortitude of is subjects. He had eagerly sought out to deconstruct the very intellectual fabric of his victim, hunting for a point of weakness, then tugging at it relentlessly until his prey unravelled. Akin to pulling at a string on the sleeve of a sweater until the garment was in shreds.

Ino had watched the man grow more and more hysterical, before attempting to intervene with her family's signature jutsu.

She had attempted to describe to Sakura the sensation of being within the mind of another, she stumbled to find the proper words before her eyes lighting up at the comparison she had crafted. She likened the human psyche to an oyster. A shell for her to crack open that harbour the individuals subconscious. The stronger one was mentally speaking the more difficult it was to pry the shell open.

"However, once I'm in there it's like I'm the pearl floating inside of the oyster."

Sakura had rolled her eyes at the vain comparison her friend had crafted but continued to listen with out interrupting non the less.

"See normally," Ino began. "It's like I'm floating in this shell. I can see everything in their mind just they have perceived it. But... But, when I went into that guys mind it was chaos. I couldn't make sense of anything it was like I was being pulled in all directions, like there was a bunch of leaks in the shell. As if some one had tried to smash it with a hammer and everything inside it was leaking out." Ino became visibly distressed as she recalled the disturbing sensation. Taking a moment to calm her self she continued in a sombre tone.

"I don't know what he does to them Sakura... But whatever it is it doesn't feel right. The man had to be hospitalized after and Jin... Jin- well he looked almost proud of what he had done."

Sakura had been fairly perturbed at her friends story. Her sense of self righteousness was irked by having someone like Jin as a recognized fellow Konoha shinobi. Konoha had always seemed to be made up of comrades that shared the same moral reasoning as she. It was slightly off-putting to realize that individuals like Jin operated maliciously within the ninja ranks. Finding pleasure in the pain of others went against every lesson to act with honour that had been ingrained into her since the academy.

Seeing Jin before her now, clearly having no qualms about defecting to Sasuke's rule, only reaffirmed her initial conclusion that this was a man who cared not for honour. Men like Jin only cared for their own desires. And if honour interfered with his means to enact those desires it would not see him lose sleep over the matter. As a petty after thought Sakura noted that Jin looked like a slimy individual to begin with.

Her mother had once made sure to thoroughly scolded her as a child, after a man bearing a particularly vicious scar had given a friendly smile to a young Sakura. Sakura had instantly feared the man, his scarring had twisted his features and over shadowed the genuine gesture behind his jolly grin. She had promptly ducked out of sight behind her mothers skirts, clenching the cotton fabric in her tiny fists as she buried her face in the material. Her mother had been horrified by the action and flustered to apologize to the stranger. The man had laughed off her red faced mother's babbling spew of apologies. Waving his hand as if to brush the encounter off, politely assuring he was not offended, chalking up Sakura's reaction as childish ignorance. It was likely that the mans nonchalance had sadly been developed through similar experiences. Soon after her mother had swiftly begun chiding her wide eyed daughter with a sour expression. A crease between her mother's brow had been a long time tell tale sign that she was particularly displeased and meant business.

Sakura had quickly received the wide spread fable every youth had heard one time or another, not to judge a book by its cover. Sakura been rightfully ashamed at her blunder, looking properly scorned as her mother explained how she had hurt the mans feelings with her actions.

What Sakura's mother had forgotten to mention in this lecture however, was that contrastingly this lesson applied inversely as well. Book covers that bore beautiful bindings and delicate artistry were just as likely to be filled with pages of horror and wickedness.

However, Sakura felt as though she could confidently fore go this particular proverb as she examined Jin. He looked to be filled with everything that Sakura saw from a mere glance. He was a tall sinewy man with sunken features and seemed to slither around the room rather than walk. His features were not horribly unattractive, decidedly average in fact. Or at least they would have been if not for his dark beady eyes that shifted back and forth as he talked.

His voice was slippery and words seemed to slither from between his unusually thin lips. He began poking at Sakura with pointed questions, usually regarding her life before the collapse of Konoha. His eyes would dart about erratically as he scanned her face to gauge her reactions. She never replied to his questioning but was soon annoyed to find that he did not need her to. When he prodded at a particularly sensitive subject, Sakura would force herself to remain frozen beneath his gaze. She would know she had failed in hiding her reaction when a twisted smile slid over his crooked mouth and his eyes sparked with delight at having found another string to pull on. This would begin a new barrage of questions she did not want to answer and topics she did not want to approach.

Jin quickly discovered that Sakura's achelliez heel lay in mentioning her former friends and comrades. He would pester her with questions on their whereabouts, asking if she knew wether they were still alive or not. He sometimes lingered on the subject of her know deceased allies, casually listing off their names and circumstances of their death. If he was in an unusually juvenile mood he would mock her by offering false sympathies. Sarcastically commenting on what a pity the loss of a 'great' Konoha shinobi was.

He had brought up the death of his former mentor Ibiki and Sakura noted that he seemed rather smug about the entire thing. It was easy to assume that he revelled in no longer being stuck beneath the foot of his old teacher as he had been forced to do so during Konoha's prime. Jin seemed an arrogant sort. He was clearly gifted in psychoanalysis tactics, he seemed to thrive as if in his element, during their interrogations. He clearly knew he commanded this battlefield of mental games and subterfuge. Perhaps even more so than Ibiki had. However, Konoha had deemed him inferior to the man and it was likely a sore spot for his ego. Sakura had been sorely tempted to throw a jibe at his shallow little insecurity but ultimately decided it would only bother him more if she continued remain silent.

They looped through this pattern of addressing her dead friends a number of times. Each one stinging at her conscience more than the last. He appeared to be building himself up to drop a bomb that would inevitably leave her shattered. Sakura already knew what it was.

He seemed strangely giddy one evening, shifting and twitching on the edge of his seat as though he were incapable of containing himself. He leaned himself over the table to come as close to her face as the furniture between them would allow.

"I wonder, with all your dead friends... Which one of them would you say you regret not saving the most?" His oily voice whispered with a sneer. "I bet that little piece of healer inside you is in agony you couldn't save them all. Always prone to survivors guilt, you medic ninja." He said with a pitying sigh, insincerity leaking into his tone he hadn't even bothered trying to hide." He was so close she could feel the nauseating warmth from his breath against her skin and she fought the urge to cringe in disgust.

"But if I had to venture a guess... I'd say it was probably..." He dragged out the word in a playful manner, as if truly in contemplation. Sakura already knew what name would come from his lips and she bit her tongue to keep from barking at him to simply say it already.

"Naruto." He said with a sadistic smile, beady eyes glued to her face as he waited for an out burst of anger or some other grand reaction at his audacity to mention the name of the boy in her presence.

His eyebrow began to twitch in annoyance and a scowl came over his features, when he got absolutely nothing.

He scanned her face once more looking for any sign that she was vigorously attempting to suppress her emotions and he became more irritated when he found none. Sakura for her part felt nothing at the name. She had no anger, no sadness. She was numb.

She knew that he would eventually broach this subject. She had been waiting for it since they first met. Expecting it overtime they shared a room. She knew it was coming and she didn't care. This person couldn't say anything about Naruto that would get to her. No matter how much he attempted to manipulate her emotional guilt, or drive her to relive the memory of his death, she was numb to it. Jin hadn't accounted for the fact that there was nothing he could say about Naruto or her failure in letting him meet his end in that valley, that she had not done so herself.

At her anticlimactic lack of response he had attempted to increase his pressuring. Asking her if she felt guilt, or if she thought the world might be better if she had been the one to die. But Sakura remained unfazed. She had already asked herself these questions millions of times before and she already knew their answer.

Jin continued to linger for a while after. Studying her to see if she would soon break given time to process, but still the pink haired girl was ever silent and stoic. He eventually grew frustrated and stormed out of the room leaving Sakura in a familiar silence until their next visit.

Jin hadn't come for some time after that. She assumed her dismissal of what he had intended as a devastating blow to her psyche had shaken him. Forcing him to regroup and compose an alternate strategy to torture her with.

In their next visit he appeared to have abandoned the topic of Naruto all together, or was perhaps saving it for a later date when her minds walls had crumbled further. His new interest appeared to be her role in the first rebellion. She inwardly grimaced at the topic. Cursing the man in his choice of subjects. Next to Naruto she considered the rebellion to be one of her biggest failures.

"Shall we discuss your part in the first rebellion?" He began in his usual haughty tone, taking pleasure in seeing the tendons in her neck tighten. He gave a small smirk knowing that he was on the correct path with his efforts.

"What a spectacular disaster that was." He scoffed, letting out a wicked chuckle. Sakura wanted to wipe that grin off his face with her fist more than anything in that moment.

"I bet you can still recall the exact moment when you lost that last shred of hope you had all been desperately clinging to."

He was not wrong. Sakura remembered every detail in that moment. Every sound. Every bit of scattered debris that surrounded her. She remembered everything in that moment as she felt pure hopelessness wash over her.

After Sasuke had escaped from his confinement it had been chaos.

He began his reign of terror by first slaughtering the village elders. Their bodies were later discovered pinned to the crumbled remains of what was left of the Hokage mountain. Each one held in place by a spear through their abdomen. No one dared to take them down from where he had seen fit to display them. It was clear he intended for their mangled corpses to be seen. A message that they held no place in his plans for a new world and anyone who crossed him would meet a similar fate.

Still many had tried. He had decimated wave after wave of Konoha ninja until nearly half of the entire village forces were depleted. As the grim reality set in, there came a realization that the new world Sasuke described was an inevitability and so much more sinister than the threats of a raving mad man who had nothing left to lose.

Ninja soon became divided. There were the few like Jin who readily embraced the new leadership. Eager to find a place in the new regime. Those who opposed the the take over soon found themselves left with few options. Some fought and died. Others ran to seek refuge outside of Konoha with the majority of civillian population that had been forced to evacuate. It did them little good as these settlements were soon encompassed by the militia sent to expand Sasuke's rule. Some who had initially abhorred the tyrannical empire soon found themselves reluctantly joining the cause. Their moral resolutions abandoned in favour of self preservation. Dutifully hunting down their former comrades who refused to be complacent. A part of Sakura hated these men and woman for abandoning their loyalties. Another part of her sympathized with them. She knew their faces. Knew their families. She could rationalize their necessity to protect themselves and their loved ones. Yet bitterness still stewed within her as she thought of how their unwillingness to fight back only made it more impossible for those who would.

She was proud to say that the Konoha Rookie 9 along with what was left of Gai's team had all remained strong in their conviction to take back their home. They had been the ones to first form the underground rebellion. Their base of operations had been set in the mountainous terrain just north of Konoha. Shielded by the fire countries rough landscapes they came together and began to plot the down fall of the dictator who had once been one of their own.

Careful and meticulous planning sought to recruit forces to combat Sasuke. The ninja world was filled with murmurings of a rebellion and hushed whispers that told of a growing army. More ninja began to offer themselves in support of their cause. Sakura's heart ached to see that many of them came championing Naruto's legacy, each one having been touched by the grinning orange clad boy in some way. He was their beacon of hope when they needed it and his light filtered through their hearts now. The blonde had become their symbol of hope in those dark times, every man and woman who upheld it was unwaveringly committed to doing their part.

However, as their army began to grow so did Sasuke's reach. The most jarring blow had been the fall of the Sand village. The ninja world was rocked by the defeat of a village as powerful as the Sand. She had been told it had been a bloody battle with immeasurable losses. The Kazekage had been forced to abandon the village in hopes of allowing as many of his people the chance to escape the oncoming militia. Following the sombre news it had come of no surprise to any of them when Gaara and his siblings had shown up on their doorstep with a brigade of Sands forces. Each one enraged at what had become of their home and ready to lay down their life to take it back.

The displaced Kazekage had partnered with Kakashi to become the unspoken leaders of the rebellion. Shikamaru had served as chief strategist and had begun to construct a plan for a full scale attack with their substantial amassment of troops. Hope had begun to spread through the encampment breathing life into the broken people who had lost everything. Optimism was hesitant but not nonexistent.

The main objective had been to liberate those who were unable to escape when chaos had first struck. Hundreds of their comrades were forced into imprisonment by the new order. Rock Lee had been devastated he had been forced to leave his sensei behind. Gai had been confined to recovery in a hospital bed and left without the use of his legs following he aftermath of the Great War. He would not have survived the trip fleeing from Konoha and as such remained imprisoned in the village. Over the coming months Lee had been ecstatic at the possibility of rescuing his mentor. Their reunion seemed to be his driving force behind his efforts to remain the same eternal optimist that inspired those around him.

This optimism however, was lost upon those within the inner circle charged with strategizing the plan of attack and militarizing the troops. For all his genius Shikamaru kept running into the same obstacle with every scenario of attack. The obstacle being Sasuke himself. If left unaccounted for Sasuke possessed the means to wipe out the entirety of their forces. Rescuing the others would be impossible should he choose to stop their attempt. He needed to be dealt with before any sort of strategy could commence.

There were few people capable of lasting anything longer than a mere minute against Sasuke. To challenge him one on one would provide a nessecary distraction but ultimately result in death. There had truly only been one option. Only one man was capable of incapacitating Sasuke long enough for their forces to breach Konoha's walls. It was a devastating realization to every one there.

Only the man himself seemed at peace with the conclusion reached. There was no one else who could do this. And had their been, Kakashi still would not accept placing the burden of his student upon anyone else.

Sakura had been inconsolable. She was furious at her comrades acceptance of Kakashi's sacrifice and enraged with Kakashi himself, refusing to speak to him entirely during the weeks leading up to the battle. Her soul was already shattered and she couldn't bare to think of what suffering another loss like Naruto would do to her. She had blatantly refused to allow another loved one to die by that monsters hands while she was still breathing and able to do something about it.

She had resolved that she would refuse to speak to Kakashi entirely until he abandoned the suicidal mission and listened to her reasoning that they could find another way given time. The older man was clearly saddened by the pain he was causing his student but refused to back away from what he considered his penance for failing his students. He resolved that he would bring an end to the pain he had allowed Sasuke to cause. Should that mean he died doing so he could think of no worthier cause.

The night before the attack Sakura had remained vigilant in her vow of silence towards her sensei, who had resigned to shooting her pitying looks from across the camp. it had been then that Hinata approached her as she stared into the fire stewing in her own misery. Sakura hadn't spoken much to the quiet girl since their last encounter during Sasuke's imprisonment.

In fact Hinata seldom spoke to anyone anymore. The once noble Hyuuga was now little more than a quivering wreck these days. Her remaining family had all but perished through the various battles to subdue a volatile Sasuke after his prison break. The Hyuuga's had been cut down mercilessly as the road clan fought to regain control of their village. Her Father and younger Sister had died within the first waves and what was left of Hinata after Naruto's death died with them. People whispered in hushed tones about the broken girl when they thought she could not hear them. The spoke of the fragile state of her mind, casting sympathetic glances at her form from the corners of their eyes.

Hinata could often be found mumbling to herself as though having a conversation with someone who wasn't there. Her tent was often given a wide berth by the other refugees, because when the night fell they could hear the terrible shrieks coming from within that only reminded them of their own suffering.

Kiba had taken it upon himself to act as a sort of buffer between HInata and the others. He would ensure she had eaten a proper meal that day, sit by her side as she stared into the campfire mumbling nonsense to herself, and would let out a distinctly canine like growl at the people he managed to catch whispering about the delicate Hyuuga girl when they thought he wasn't listening.

So when Hinata greeted Sakura sounding clear as a bell, the pink haired girl was more than a little surprised.

"You should use this time left to speak with him you know." The dark haired girl said clearly coming to stand beside Sakura. Her opal gaze trained on the fire as though she had not spoken at all.

Recovering from her surprise at hearing the girl speak Sakura let out a heavy sigh before turning her gaze towards the flames as well.

"I know that. But if I do it's like I'm accepting his choice. It makes this all real." Sakura began before letting her voice become thick with frustrated tears. "I can't lose him too. He can't die too!"

"He will die." The Hyuuga's soft voice cut through casually as though she were commenting on the nights sky. Sakura was shocked at the blunt statement before becoming angry at her companions definitive tone used to comment on her teachers fate.

"You can't know that. Kakashi is strong he can-"

"You were right back then." Hinata interrupted. "I didn't listen then. But I understand now. That man is a monster." The Hyuuga concluded with an edge in her voice.

Sakura turned to stare at the girl next to her and found the womans normally serene features furrowed and jaw clenched.

"He is a monster. And if Kakashi goes to fight him he will die." She continued. "These are you're last moments with him. Most people are not given that sort of luxury of knowing. Make it count." Hinata finished abruptly standing from the log in front of the fire and marching herself towards the direction of her tent.

After some time spent pondering the other girls words Sakura came to the conclusion that if these moments were to truly be her last with Kakashi then she would not squander them on anger. She was still adamant that she would see to it her teacher survived the coming battle. She would do everything in her power to ensure that he lived. She would not let another life be taken away by the monster team mate had become.

She found her teacher at the edge of one of the mountains many rocky ledges. His legs dangling from the ledge in an almost childish manner the was unbefitting of his true age. He did not acknowledge her but assuredly knew she was there with him. This was confirmed when he patted his hand against the ground next to him singling for her to take a seat.

For a while the two said nothing. Simply content to be in one another's presence. The words that needed to be said were complicated and sombre, they both agreed to allow themselves a moment of simply being together in a peaceful silence.

It was Sakura who decided to break that silence first.

"Can you do it?" She asked seeing no need to explain herself any further. Kakashi did not answer immediately, as if carefully considering his response. After another beat he let out a deep sigh.

"I don't know Sakura. But I am prepared to do what is necessary."

Sakura gave a small nod seeming to accept the answer. Another long silence fell upon then before her voice cut through it once more.

"Do you ever wish that you had killed back then when we had the chance?"

Kakashi gave a look of mild surprise at her words. Sakura had always been a gentler soul, the words she spoke now didn't suit the chipper little girl he had once known.

"...No." He finally answered. "He was not the same person then as he is now."

" I think about killing him." She responded casually. "I think about all the pain and suffering he has caused and I wish I had jammed that kunai right through his heart when I had the chance."

Kakashi was saddened by her words but could not fault her for them. Sasuke had taken the sweet girl he had once known and dragged through hell and back a million times over. It ached to for Kakashi to see she had not come out unscathed. She was hardened through war, death and betrayal. The little genin who fussed over her silky locks and burst into tears when something pulled at her heartstrings, that girl was a memory. It was bittersweet to see the soft hearted girl go but he was unquestionably proud of the strong capably woman she had left in her wake. He only hoped that a part of that wide eyed little girl, who exuded love and kindness, even the smallest part remained.

"Sasuke was never your responsibility Sakura. He is mine." Kakashi said placing a fatherly hand atop the girls pink locks. The two remained silent for the rest of the night. Sitting next to each other watching the night sky.

The next day Kakashi was dead


	9. Chapter 9

During the battle of the rebellion she had initially jolted when she felt the first tremors and after shocks that signalled the start of what was sure to be a fearsome battle. The rebel army was positioned just outside Konoha's walls, each battalion strategically placed. All awaiting the sign that Kakashi had begun to engage their biggest threat. Each shock wave sent a sickening fear through Sakura as she struggled to remain committed following her part of the plan. Attempting to lock away the manic distress she felt thinking of her sensei engaged in battle with the demon posing as a man.

Even from miles away, Sakura and the other ninja cringed at the stifling waves of power emitting in the distance. Her her heart seemed as though it would beat out of her chest, and she clenched her clammy palms furiously in an effort to assuage the organ. This was not the time to let her panic show. Not as their troops began their approach to breach the daunting walls that had once been their home. This was war and she could not be ruled by anything other than rationality and logic. Fear was prevalent in the air but their training told them it had no place on the battle field. Weakness would only lead to death and Sakura was not ready to die until she saw her home reclaimed and his head on the end of a pike.

Her knuckles were stark white as the skin was stretched viciously over the joints. Her nails bit into flesh with enough pressure to draw out small beads of crimson that were a sickeningly similar shade to the pair of eyes that plagued her nightmares. Despite her best efforts her subconscious was not immune to the effects from her recent traumas. Her dreams were vivid and seemed to feed off of her internal agony and paranoia. She had fought vigorously to suppress the afflictions that slipped through the cracks of her broken mental state. An unstable mind was a dangerous thing for a soldier on the battlefield and she refused to become a liability to her comrades relying on her to remain strong. Still, try as she might to contain her grievances behind a mask of grim determination, she was inwardly struggling desperately to hold herself together. Her mind would conjure a mere image of those nightmarish eyes and she would jerk awake. Panting and drenched in the sweaty aftermath of the nightmare Sakura choked and heaved to suppress the sound of her cries. She could not let the others see how weak she truly was. They needed her to be the same bullheaded, powerhouse of a kunoichi that she had come to be recognized as. The Hokages apprentice, medical prodigy and a sheer force of nature not be reckoned with.

She could not become the scared, helpless little girl from her past. She could not fall off the edge. Hinata had been enough of a reminder of the general communal sense fragility they all felt. They were all suffering. All teetering on the edge of breaking down beyond repair. Moral was often overlooked in terms of militant applications, however this army thrived upon it. It was what kept them all going. Every bit as much their life force as the blood pumping through their veins. And every time a comrade was lost to their misery, broken by their grief, crumbled under the weight upon their shoulders... The drive running through them grew a little bit colder.

Everyone had seen it happen at one time or another, had known someone. Hinata was far from being the sole victim crushed by their circumstance. Sakura had witnessed even the most burly looking men and women, hardened through years of battle as a shinobi, be reduced to quivering wrecks. It could happen at the drop of the hat for seemingly no reason at all. Each outburst was unique. Some cried, some screamed and others remained completely silent. One or two had actually become violent in their hysterics and had had to be detained. It was impossible to predict what would happen when it all became too much for them. But regardless of the form their anguish manifested itself in, they all were left defeated. Broken.

Some eventually recovered. Others like Hinata had yet to, or simply didn't at all.

Sakura sometimes envied the pitiful girl in a twisted sort of way. She wondered if being left broken would be accompanied with release. Perhaps a shattered mind offered solace in delusion. A means of escaping reality.

She had once heard Hinata softly telling Kiba of a place she went in her head, when the world became too ugly. Sakura had felt a touch of remorse for unintentionally eavesdropping on the nearby private conversation, but couldn't help but be peaked at the idea of a place away from all of this. She wondered if she could somehow build her own place within her mind. A safe haven untouched by the wickedness of this world.

She fantasized about a sunny meadow that she had played in as a child. The flowers were illuminated by beams of shimmering light and danced in the warm breeze that seemed to wrap around her like a blanket. The long over grown blades of grass were impossibly soft and tickled pleasantly at her calfs. The trees hummed with life, winding branches sturdy and strong as they loomed over the grassy plains protectively. The air smelt of nature itself, tinged with a touch of dewiness like the crystalline droplets of water that clung to the plants after a light rainfall. When it rained in the meadow it would always be through sunshine. The clouds light and fluffy and never blocking out the rays of light streaming down upon the meadow. There would never be thunderstorms. And absolutely never would the serenity be penetrated by the vicious crack of lighting. No. Never any lightening.

The meadow was to be a happy place all the time. Filled with all her favourite sights, sounds and smells.

Lost in the illusion her heart painfully swelled at the notion that she could fill it with all her favourite people. She would share her paradise with all of her loved ones, even the ones she had lost. In the recesses of her minds delusion they could all exist happily. Laughing and cavorting around the utopia. A small smile twitched at the corner of her lips as she realized her imagination had begun to craft a visual of them all revelling in bliss. And she let herself feel a pinch of sentimentalism as she discovered her mind had unintentionally deemed it necessary for this make believe scene to feature sunny blonde hair wearing a big goofy grin right in the centre of it all. Where he was always meant to be.

She allowed herself another selfish moment to bask in her little mental picture. One more brief moment before her rational mind came to fetch her and drag her out of the fantasy world. Her mind was not yet broken. She was still strong enough to face the real world. She was not yet lost enough to live within a lie of her own making. Not when people were still relying on her. Not when she was still able to fight for a reality of peace.

Regaining awareness of her surroundings she had looked around at the faces of her fellow fighters. Each man and woman fighting to make this world one where true happiness could exist. She vowed then and there to never let her thoughts return to the fake happiness her mind had constructed. She knew the next time she did, it would be as truly broken. And Sakura did not think she would be able to find the strength to leave.

Even presently sitting across from Jin as he maliciously forced her to drag up the memories of the horrific battle, watching how she tried not to clench at every name belonging to a dead person spewing from his mouth... Sakura was not broken yet. The rebellion aftermath had nearly done so, but she remained strong. Naruto's death had left her broken for a time but she had found the strength to push herself up once more. Her capture and forced return to Konoha had not broken her. Not her cell, not the drownings, not the needles. She remained unbroken.

These men were nothing compared to what she had suffered, even as they taunted her with it she understood that at some point she had silently vowed she would not break. Especially not at the hands of a slimy son a bitch like Jin.

Let them play their mind games. She would endure every moment of this reality, before letting Jin have the satisfaction of seeing her crumble.

Let them shove her face in the tragedies of the past. It mattered not. She would find something to keep her going.

Jin proceeded to divulge her with a detailed account of the clean up required after the battle, particularly her comrades bodies.

"I imagine the survivors gave them all some sort of service hm? Maybe a toast or two in their honour? I know your old mentor was fond of the drink? Did you happen to inherit that little trait as well from her teachings?" He goaded with a sly wink. His face unabashedly amused by his jibe. Only becoming more visibly delighted as he watched anger creep into the edges of Sakura's rigid gaze.

She longed with every fibre of her being to jab something into that eye giving her a saucy wink, while he spoke mockingly of a great woman he had no business mentioning. She let her mind briefly wander to the shard of glass she currently had stowed away in her cell.

On the worst of days that tiny bit of sharpened glass was her salvation. Carefully tucked away in the crease between the padding of the walls and floor in the cushy barren room, that glass was her trump card. And while she longed to one day jump across the metal table of the interrogation room and jam it directly into Jin's beady eyes, his screams would be like music to her ears, she reasoned she could not waste such a valuable resource on someone as pathetic as him. He was insignificant in the grand scheme of things. That piece of glass was her bargaining chip. She was only biding her time until the right opportunity came to use it.

"Must have been a hell of a party that funeral. After all there were so many of them, I doubt even the most veteran drunkards could make it through a toast for every name." He continued and Sakura began to see red clenching every muscle in her body to keep from quaking with rage as he spoke so flippantly at the catastrophic loss of lives. Accusing her of celebrating their sacrifice with something so cheap.

She hadn't been able to so much as move for days after the battle, let alone drink herself into a stupor. She doubted it would have helped much anyways. After escaping the battle to avoid capture Sakura had simply sat in solitude within a small desolate cavern on the mountain face overlooking the village. She had sat there for six days before nearly withering away from dehydration.

She did not cry. Did not scream. She simply sat on the damp rocky floor in silence. As she sat she found herself picturing every face she had seen on that battle field. She remembered their features and tried to recall almost all of their names. She had gotten most of them after a few cycles. However, one womans name from the sand village completely escaped her. She had spent hours on end trying to recall the womans name. Replaying every memory she had of her in hopes of churning out a revelation but could never seem to recall it. She obsessed over that one name relentlessly. She could recall every detail of the womans face down to the last freckle, but could not put a name to her. She would eventually let herself move on to the other faces for a while but as she cycled through them she would return to the woman and begin her search once more.

Out of all the losses that day. That woman's bothered her the most. The nameless womans' face tortured her. She could not recall a point in her life where she had ever felt lower. This woman had died for them that day while Sakura had lived, yet she did not know the womans name. Perhaps it was selfish and vain to agonize over her own guilt while the woman remained dead. But Sakura had been disturbed by one thought that filled her with shame.

'What if there is no one left to remember her name?' She would ask herself. 'She died a hero and no one will know it...'

The thoughts of the nameless woman would continue and she would grow more and more distressed.

'What will they put on her grave? She'll die without a proper grave. No one will remember her sacrifice.'

Becoming angrier with herself as she became frantic to recall a name.

'S-she died and so I could live... and I'm so useless I can't even remember a FUCKING name!'

Looking back Sakura was certain that she had gotten a taste of true madness in that cave. Dehydrated, malnourished, sleep deprived and traumatized from the battle her hysteric and fragmented mental stability had not brought her any form of peace as she had once thought it might. She had descended into a panicked frenzy that did not grant her a moments rest.

She began carving every single name she could think of into the walls of that cave. Frantically chipping away at the stone with a pointed rock and fanatic vigour. Desperately hoping that one of the names might belong to the woman. She would leave a mark on this earth to commemorate that woman on the walls of the cave. even if no one ever saw it, her broken logic rationalized that it would still serve as some sort of commerative.

The more she allowed her body and mind to deteriorate the more she began to spiral, until every inch of the caves surface was covered with crudely scratched lettering. The floor and walls bearing hundreds of names birthed from the mind of a woman driven by lunacy. Towards the end her body screamed for sustenance, after being deprived of nourishment and rest. But still Sakura used her remaining vestiges of strength to continue carving into the stone. Eventually she only possessed the strength to lightly drag the rock against the stone in fumbled motions. Not able to gather enough force to make any real marking, and not quite sure she was writing anything anymore. Still, as she lay on her side, no longer able to sit upright, she cathartically continued to move the stone against rock in a lazy motion. The gravely sound of the surfaces grinding against one another soothed her in a strange way. She was unsure if she was lucid enough at that point to still understand her initial reason for carving into the caves surface. Only comprehending that she must continue doing it.

By the fourth day she was clinging to life as she dragged the rock back and forth. Back and forth. Her body was shutting down, her throat bone dry and painfully sore from attempting to swallow non existent saliva. Her lips were cracked and skin a sallow, sickly pallor. Her eyelids felt as if they were made of lead and she caught herself growing helpless to stop them from shutting completely. Her heart beat seemed to flutter weakly and every breath burned. She was closer to death than she could ever remember being and her foggy mind could not summon the will to survive.

She had been found on the sixth day by a former merchant seeking refuge in the mountains. He had initially thought her to be dead, if not for the rock twitching listlessly in her hand he would have deemed her to surely be so. The old man had been shocked by the discovery of the pink haired girl dwelling in the mountains cavern. Fate seemed to be particularly fortuitous for Sakura on that day, for the man was a kind soul and quickly leaped at the opportunity to save the pitiful creature before him.

The man used the few rations he possessed to help nurse the sickly girl, he had found teetering on the verge of death, back to health. The first few days under the mans care Sakura remained unconscious. She could later recall foggy memories of the old merchant tending to her. Slipping in and out of consciousness she remembered the briefest flashes of a figure looming over her and muttering words of comfort. Gentle tone meant to sooth her like one would a child as water and gruel were pressed to her lips. The voice took on a chiding cadence when in her haze state she ignored the offerings letting them dribble down her chin as it spilled from the spoon tilted to her mouth.

It was the pressure of the wooden utensil at her lips that had first awoken her. Her eyes fluttered as they open and she squinted to force her blurry vision to clear. Seeing a shadowy figure weilding the object being shoved towards her she was first met with confusion only to have her ninja impulses kick in at the affront to her personal space. She quickly established that she did not recognize the person hovering over her form.

As her vision cleared she was able to make out weathered features hidden beneath a scraggly greying beard. Tanned skin surrounded bright blue eyes that visibly crinkled at the edges. The creases somehow seemed a comfort as they were the sort of wrinkles brought about through frequent smiling. A genuine sort that spread through out the whole face and left its mark engraved into tell tale laugh lines. The man was dressed in fairly shabby clothes that seemed tarnished and frayed with use. The thick material of his garments although aged and well worn was clearly made to be durable. One could easily identify the outfits practical applications, and Sakura made the assumption its wearer was likely a seasoned traveler. Her suspicions only reaffirmed by the large pack laying in the corner of the cave, lined with an excessive amount of pockets, visible just beyond the mans shoulder. The man did not appear to be a ninja, for a shinobi would never travel with such an abundant excess of supplies. The were trained to live off their surroundings whatever they may be, and such a bulky bag would only be a nuisance in slowing them down.

Still, being caught in such a vulnerable position, at the mercy of a stranger no less, sent her instincts haywire and she began to panic visibly.

Seeing the small malnourished girl begin to become distressed the man backed away slowly raising his palms to her line of sight in the universal gesture meant to indicate he meant her no harm. Although the shaken woman before him ceased to acknowledge his intentions and began gasping for breath as her drowsy mind worked itself into a panic. The man began to make gentle hushing sounds mumbling that she ought to be mindful of her body still recovering from the state he had found her in. The man attempted to lay a comforting hand on the frazzled girls shoulder but quickly learned that this was a mistake.

Seeing the offending limb coming towards her, her body moved with unnervingly swift precision and promptly sprang to neutralize the threat. It was like second nature to her as she gained the upper hand and threw the man sharply against the wall of the cave, pinning him by his throat. Her ring finger hovered over a pressure point near his jugular that could incapacitate him in the time it took him to blink. The man was visibly jarred by the show of inhuman speed and force exhibited by the tiny girl, who only days before had been incapable of lifting a finger to feed herself.

"Who the hell are you?" Sakura growled in the most intimidating tone she was capable of mustering. To hear ears it had sounded shaky and she struggled to fight the dizziness that had resulted from moving so quickly after coming out of bed rest. She was annoyed at her body's weakness as it protested her movements hitting her with a wave of exhaustion and aging joints as she struggled to maintain her grip on the unfamiliar man. She digressed that even in her feeble state she was likely more than capable of over powering the elderly man. He showed no signs of being a ninja, although this only made his presence even more suspicious to Sakura. Civilians did not normally possess the know how to scale the rocky terrain of a mountain side, yet this 70 something senior appeared to be untarnished from the path that lead up to the tiny cave. As she waited for an answer from the man beneath her grip she was mildly surprised that he appeared oddly calm given his situation. Unperturbed by the offensive Kunoichi's hand wrapped around his neck.

"Thought you might've been a ninja." He grumbled out in a gravely tone. The word ninja trigged Sakura and she grew ever more hostile at his presence.

"Who sent you?!" She barked, and was mildly irritated when the man let out a small chuckle.

"I presume it was the fates that sent me to you." His eyes twinkled with a sincere amusement at his speculation and Sakura faltered letting her guard drop as her expression became one of genuine confusion.

"Why are you here? How did you find me?" She pressed further.

"I imagine you should be rather grateful I found you. Quite the state you were in. I almost didn't think you'd make it."

Sakura's eyes grew wide as she reflected on the recent days passed. The memories were jagged and scrambled at best, and what she could recall did not seem like memories of her own. The crazed girl scraping at the walls of the cave seemed like a parody of herself. As though she had been disembodied during the entire affair. The exhaustion and starvation coupled with the tyrant of guilt and agony she felt had made her delusional and irrational. Her mind in that volatile state had not been her own.

"You.. you saved me.." She muttered breathily. Her grip on the man slackening as she attempted to process this information. Cringing at the state she had let befall her.

Her statement appeared to sound as though it had been phrased as a question and the man had felt it necessary to elaborate.

"I would never let another human being die while I had the chance to do something about it." He said in a firm tone as though the idea of such a thing infringed upon his moral values. Although his stern admonishment was replaced with a familiar twinkle as he playfully added, "Even an annoying one like you."

Letting her hand drop Sakura was conflicted by her saviour. Him being in the mountains alone was ultimately suspicious to her, although unlikely at his age the cynical part of her mind reasoned he could be a scout sent to search for the remaining rebels who had managed to escape the battle. She was no longer quick to trust these days and she theorized that his warm demeanour was an act meant to placate her into staying put while he awaited reinforcements. Still the part of her lead by her emotions told her gut that this man was a good sort. But, then again she had once thought him to be a good sort at one point too.

"Why are you out here? You're a civilian and these paths are dangerous for the average folk, let alone.." She trailed off realizing abashedly the rude direction her statement had been going. She had the decency to feel a small prick of embarrassment at blatantly remarking on her saviours age. However, she reasoned that impunity did not make her reasoning invalid.

The man gave a good natured bark of laughter at the obvious unintended insult.

"Hah! I was right about you! Little thing like you looked sweet as pie sleeping there in that corner. But me I just knew, _I just knew!_ You'd be a little spitfire!"

For all her grim circumstances Sakura couldn't help but feel the small tug of a smile at the corner of her mouth. The mans jovial exuberance was nothing if not infectious and it had been so long since she had met someone so unburdened by the darkness of the present world. It reminded her of a time where such behaviour was not so uncommon.

"Still, I suppose you've got a point there. Rather strange for someone to be all the way out in these parts." The old man said gesturing in her direction with a wave, while his other hand scratched at his long untamed beard.

"The thing is though, I'm not just some old geezer. I've been a traveling merchant all my life and seen everything there is to see 'round these parts. These mountains are nothing for a guy like me, and I figured they'd be the best spot to hide out from everything thats going on down there.." He said with a heavy sigh as he tilted his head towards the caves entrance, where Konoha lay just beyond at the mountains base.

Sakura grew somber at the mention of the chaos that reigned down bellow. The mountain top loomed over the village in the distance and she felt as if she were a spectator of sorts. An audience member forced to watch from above as the world burned.

"Suppose you reckon'd these mountains were the safest bet too huh?" The man said drawing her out of her melancholic reverie.

"I reckoned these mountains would let me be alone." The statement had not been meant as an insult or rebutal to the mans presence. Her voice came out hollow and monotonous, vacant of any barbed jibe or edge. Her words were cold as though she were simply stating a fact.

"Doesn't seem like that worked out well for you." The man replied, his words were spoken as a tentative jest to the bitter irony of her words. The remark held no maliciousness to it, he merely answered her fact with one of his own.

"No, I guess it didn't, did it?" The girl said quietly in response. A somber tone befell the small cave as they addressed their initial meeting.

It took a significant amount of pain for someone to wind up in the state Sakura had been in. The old man ached for the girl he had been caring for. For one so young to have suffered enough to reduce her to such a state, it didn't sit right with the man. The world was becoming an ugly place and he silently pitied the naivety of the girl who sought to carry such heavy burdens on her own.

To his credit the man had yet to pester her for an explanation behind her episode and she was silently grateful to him for it.

It was not particularly hard to make assumptions a to what might have occurred. Perhaps he had heard news of the failed rebellion before he had absconded to the mountains. Word would have undoubtably spread about the poor souls who were crushed mercilessly for attempting fight against the new order spreading like a disease across the world. The rebellion itself was no longer a beacon of hope but rather a grim remind of what would happen if anyone else sought to attempt a similar crusade. All those people who gave up their lives were now the antithesis of everything they had fought for. Her loved ones had died for nothing, while she lived on to see their sacrifice be one in vain.

Sometimes she wondered if they had ever truly stood a chance. Perhaps fate itself had decreed that everyone she loved was destined to meet their end while she remained the sole survivor left alone to be tortured with their memory.

In away her time spent in the cave had been an enlightenment. If the fates wished her to be alone then she would do just that. Let her self rot in the dark pit alone until she was nothing more than a pile of bones sitting in a hole made of rock. The loneliness would be her salvation. Those six days had been a sign that she had reached her breaking point. This was her limit. She was standing at the edge of a cliff with the tips of her toes hanging over the edge. It would only take one more death to send her over the edge. She would not survive another loss.

"It's better this way though." The Sakura began to ponder aloud in a listless tone. "If I have no one that I love, then no one else can die."

A heavy silence filled the space between them, before the old man broke it and let out a weighty groan.

"I've lead a life of loneliness myself." The man began, lightly nudging her in the side when she appeared lost in thought. "Never made roots anywhere I went. You get used to being alone in my line of work. Hell in a way you even come to like it. I went where ever I wanted to go. Did everything I had set out to do. All the money I made belonged only to me. Eventually I reached a point where I thought that having someone with me would only make things more difficult. I didn't have to shammy profits or listen to what others wanted. It was easier by myself. Simpler. It was just me carrying my pack alone on all those long journeys." The man seemed to conclude his tale with a firm nod and Sakura raised an eyebrow at the direction his tale had taken.

"But, you want to know something?" The man said with a smile. Sakura found herself giving a small nod if for nothing more than too humour the elderly man.

The old man seemed to take a brief pause for effect before letting an impish grin come across his features.

"My back fucking hurts like hell now."

And despite it being completely inappropriate... for she was entirely devastated, having reached rock bottom, and consumed by the death of everyone she had ever cherished... Sakura found herself letting out a roar of laughter that echoed throughout the tiny cave, the old man chuckling right along with her.

Laughing themselves into near hysterics as they sat next to each other sharing in their miserable existences, in a world that was headed straight to hell.

Sakura remembered that night spent laughing with the old man fondly. He had been a kind soul who had dragged her from the precipice of her darkest hour. She would be remiss if she claimed that she had not given thought to the meaning weaved within the mans story.

A life of solitude will only hurt us more in the end as we become buried beneath the weight of our burdens. Perhaps his years had granted him the wisdom to decide that it is better to have those who you cherish in your life to help carry those burdens. Even if by inviting them in you risk the chance that you will suffer the pain of losing them.

Sakura would have once agreed with the man. But she also knew that the old man had never felt the weight of a burden like Sasuke. She could not claim to love anyone she allowed to share in that burden. And with that she began her life of solitude, settling in a forest on the outskirts of a tiny town that couldn't be placed on a map.

Staring at the man trying to break her now she knew she had made the right decision. Jin would never be able to break Sakura because Sakura would only be broken by one thing. One thing that no longer existed.

All the people she loved were already dead.


	10. Chapter 10

Jin had seemed to become somewhat unhinged as of late. Sakura assumed that it was because he was used to seeing more progress in his 'patients' by this point. She wondered if he was feeling the pressure to produce results and when she gave none he grew more distressed. Sakura was a touch offended he would expect her to crumble as easily as those he had worked on before. Those people had not lived through the horrors that she had. They had not born a burden like hers. They had not seen what she had seen.

It would take far more than the frazzled mans taunting and reminders of the past to see her fall.

Jin's change in behaviour wouldn't be obvious to most people, or perhaps she had been the only one to notice. Sometime during the first few weeks of their sessions together she began to develop the habit of fixating her scrutiny upon Jin. It had initially started out as a petty form of retaliation for Sakura. While his acute beady little eyes fiercely studied her habits, reactions and the most minuscule of facial ticks, Sakura decided that she should feel free to subject him to the same scrutiny. She hadn't picked up on much about him in her first few attempts. However she was surprisingly pleased to discover that concentrating so intently on the mans body language made it significantly easier for her to block out the hateful taunting that spewed out of his mouth. His mouth, she decided was his second worst feature. Only just trumped by his eyes that were what she had characterized as 'rat-like'. His pupils seemed to constantly blown out and practically encompassed his entire retina. She had been rather surprised when she noticed the sliver of a deep brown lining the inky black. She was a touch miffed by learning that his eyes were in fact brown. She had found it almost poetic that he bore eyes reflecting the same shade as his soul.

Along with his eye colour she soon began to pick up on smaller details in his mannerisms. Although the man beheld a snake-like quality he was stringent in his organization. The sheets of paperwork he sometimes brought to their meetings were always carefully placed in neatly straightened piles. The glimpses she had caught of his hand writing showed a well practiced penmanship, his notes tidy and structured as though they were being displayed for more than just his own eyes.

Sakura briefly wondered how he might react to seeing the messily, scribbled gibberish littered sporadically across the pages of the old medical journals she had kept. They had been practically illegible to anyone other than herself and she was sure that the typhoon of disarray her old office had consistently been in would be enough to make the man squirm. She imagined all the clutter and loose leaf papers scattered about would have gnawed at the man like an unscratched itch. Perhaps she might describe it to him one day she thought amusedly.

As though a direct reflection of his work habits, Jin was an oddly meticulous man in his grooming, almost anally so. His hair was always rigidly coiffed and held firmly in place with a sort of gel, that made it seem slightly greasy in Sakura's opinion. His uniform was perhaps the most obvious give away, that he took pride in being presentable. The collar of his shirt was always tightly pressed as though it had just been laundered. His over coat was absent of a single wrinkle and he seemed to adjust the garment as he moved so it would remain such. As he shifted he would compulsively begin to adjust his clothing so it remained in place. He tugged on his sleeves and smoothed the cloth flush against his lanky torso until it sat in the desired place. Only to repeat the process when he moved once more.

The more erratic the man became he would forget this ritual and somehow its absence seemed stranger to Sakura than the initially quirk itself. The foregoing of such a well practiced behaviour was like a red flag he had become slightly unhinged from his normal behaviour. His unkemptness had become more evident as of late. His clothes were no longer freshly pressed to their usual standard and sometimes a few stray hairs would break free and fall into his eye line. Most notably the mans beady eyes had become encased in dark circles, a clear sign he was not sleeping well.

He had begun growing more unpredictably snappy and impatient when faced with her signature silence. In his frustration and unrest he had begun to fail in masking his own ticks and he became easier for her to read. He had become more fidgety as of late. Sakura had recently caught on to his habit of tapping his pen once or twice on his clipboard before asking her a question. She had simply regarded it as mere fidgeting before. However she eventually began to notice that each time he tapped his pen against the wooden clipboard he would follow it with a question about her past. His recent fixation had been around her time as a medic during the Great War. She theorized his questioning her time as a field doctor during the War was banking on a hope she carried some sort of PTSD he would be able to exploit.

She hadn't, but she could digress it wasn't entirely a far fetched hypothesis. She had seen many soldiers suffer from the disorder after and during the war. Even before the war, as a senior member of the hospitals medical staff she found that there was a pattern in retired ANBU members often experiencing symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder. She had personally treated only two cases herself but upon researching hospital records found that ANBU operatives had a significant history of this behaviour. Judging by what she knew of Sai's time spent in ROOT she could understand how ANBU members were increasingly more susceptible to manifesting symptoms the missions that were given to ANBU took them through hell itself. For them men suffering on the frontlines, war was hell. Every moment was spent fighting to stay alive. Watching helplessly as your comrades, friends and family, were all cut down right before your eyes. She had treated a multitude of cases of psychosomatic disorders resulting from trauma. Some were minor, others severe. During her time in the field she toyed with the idea of opening a clinic to treat those suffering from physical and psychological after effects. It saddened her to think about all the good it could have brought to the world. It had the potential to have helped so many, now more so than ever. But her clinic would never exist in a world ruled by him and the irony was unbearably bitter because he was one of the people who had needed it the most.

When she had first begun to treat the early cases of PTSD that had begun sporadically popping up amongst men on the frontline, she had approached her plan for treatment using the same tried and true method she used for every other affliction. Piles and piles of research. She read every book she could get her hands and then she memorized them. She memorized every word until she was familiar enough, she could have written a book of her own. She had begun her research prioritizing in becoming well versed in identifying various symptoms and signs of psychosomatic behavioural patterns. She reasoned that her methods would be significantly more effective in combating the early stages of the disorder. The sooner she was able to spot the problem the sooner she could work to begin treating it.

As she had read through the various major behavioural symptoms and signs of trauma, her mind began to unintentionally craft an unsettling comparison.

Words like 'distant' and 'antisocial' seemed to jump out to her from the dusty pages. As she continued to read through the list of traits the words seemed to morph from being a collection of symptoms associated with a psychosomatic disorder.

'Hyper-vigilance, irritability' Instead she felt as though she had been reading a list of characteristics that embodied Sasuke.

'Restlessness, aggression' It all fit so perfectly, he was quite literally a text book case. She had been unsure of how it had not ever occurred to her before now. It was a painfully obvious diagnosis, the violent circumstances of his childhood practically ensured the manifestation of psychological trauma. However the behavioural signs had always seemed to be...just Sasuke. It had felt strange picturing him as suffering from any sort of medical affliction. Sasuke had always seemed infallible, incapable of weakness. She felt as though a pair of blinders had been removed and suddenly every memory she had of him was different.

His signature stints of moodiness and fiery temper that she had initially chalked up as being what Kakashi had referred to as 'the Uchiha blood', now seemed more sinister and concerning than her sensei's fickle excuse. Glimpses of an underlying rage that consumed him a little more each day until finally threatening to boil over.

He had pushed people away before they got close enough to become a liability. Another person he risked losing.

Strangely enough Sakura found that recent events had seen her adopt a similar strategy. She found she could begrudgingly empathize with the young boy from her past. She allowed herself a gratuitous moment to toy with the empty notion of 'what if?'. Perhaps had her vision for a clinic catering to people like Sasuke been realized in their years as genin, the world would be a much different place. Looking back she pitied the poor boy. He had been little more than a child lost in his own suffering. He had been manipulated and misguided by wicked people who twisted him into something something in their image. And then he had morphed into something far more sinister than any of them could have imagined. He was tainted by madness and drunk on his own power.

That sad little boy was dead in Sakura's eyes. He had died a long time ago, perhaps even before she had been ready to accept at the time. Maybe this nightmarish reality was their punishment for failing to save that little boy. However she would not allow herself be tricked into believing any piece of him still existed within the evil sickly thing left behind. That thing was just a monster wearing his face while it drowned itself in its own madness. It was not capable of redemption. The only option was to put it down, like one would a rabid mutt.

She absently wondered if Jin was truly ignorant to the true unhinged nature of the man he had pledged his loyalties to. Sakura couldn't imagine that someone who had been touted around for his psychological ingenuity could fail to see the cornucopia of psychosomatic ticks that was Sasuke.

From what she had gathered by Karin's nervous account of Sasuke's well being, she would venture a guess that perhaps Post Traumatic Stress Disorder had deteriorated rapidly into full blown psychosis.

Although perhaps Jin did know and simply didn't care. The revelation would not strike her as out of character. Although judging by the minuscule signs he had not managed to fully hide from her view, Sakura wondered if the man might be unravelling mentally himself. Sasuke spread his troops through the lands like a disease, why should he not share is madness with them as well.

Of course she had never had the time to research if madness truly was contagious in her brief studies. She obviously not enough of a dunce to imply it was transmittable through the same means of a biological virus. However while in her cell she had theorized that if the world was re-shapen in the image of a mad man, did the world not automatically fall into madness along with him?

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and other psychological afflictions of a similar nature were even to this day a relatively new territory for her. She was familiar with the basics but ultimately preferred specializing in the more biological fields of medicine. She enjoyed the familiarity of the human body everyone was the same as one another on the inside. The human body was predictable. Psychological areas of medicine however, dealt with unpredictability. No one was the same on the inside, sometimes they weren't even the same on the outside. Psychology peeled back the layers that people used to hide what was truly inside them and moe often than not Sakura found she did not like what was there.

However, Tsunade had been adamant that in order to be a truly effective healer one must be proficient in areas of both the mind and body. Feeling suddenly somewhat spiteful in recalling her former sensei's lecture, she snidely thought to herself that

'An efficient healer must actually _possess_ a mind and a body to be proficient.' She felt a prick of guilt at her bitter words. Mocking the temperamental woman without fear of the repercussions did little to ease the sorrow of her Teachers death.

Tsunade had perished at the hands of Uchiha Madara during the Great War. She had fought valiantly, amongst the other Hokage to kill the immortal man. However, the battle soon deteriorated into a lost cause. Every proud and mighty Kage lay defeated at the feet of the legendary Uchiha who had begun preparations for his final blow.

"Ah shit." The woman had grumbled as though accepting an inevitable path she was forced to take. Although a small smile flittered in the corner of her lips as she let out a heavy uneven gasp.

In those final moments Tsunade the greatest Healer through out the entirety of shinobi history, broke the cardinal rule being a medic ninja.

Don't die.

Her regeneration jutsu allowed her the ability to remain a shield for the other Kage.

She had taken the force of Madara's attack head on the raw chakra burned away her flesh only to have it be regenerated before it was once more stripped away by the burning energy. The pain she must have endured was unimaginable. The attack lasted 6 seconds but it must have felt like an eternity. To this day Sakura couldn't understand how her mentor was able to hold her jutsu for so long. Tsunade traditionally was tougher than most men, famously so infact. She was tougher than most shinobi as well, one was not named Hokage without possessing considerable strength. However, on that day Sakura was sure that the womans fortitude rivalled that of god itself.

Sakura was the only other person to successfully perform that jutsu. It took considerable energy and the regeneration process tended to be as painful as the wound inflicted. She was the only one who could truly begin to understand what her mentor was going through beneath the force of an attack of that magnitude.

During Tsunade's funeral many openly glorified her heroic sacrifice. Claiming she had been given a heroic death.

"She fought with valour until the very end. No one has ever been more befitting of the title of Hokage. She went out in a shining blaze of glory that will be remembered forever." One of the village elders had praised gesturing to the elaborate grave marker where little more than the ash of her bones had been able to be salvaged to be buried beneath.

"Her Sacrifice will not be forgotten by us. She met her end well with bravery in her heart." The man continued.

"Oh I seriously doubt that." Sakura had found herself slurring to the grey haired man stood beside her. She was likely unaware her voice was a few octaves above appropriate conversation level, since she had been unabashedly rip-roaring drunk. Never one to be a drinker her Sensei often attempted to encourage her to accompany her to some of her favourably frequented bars.

"I'm underage you know that it's illegal to give me alcohol." She would admonish the brash woman with a pointed look.

"Aw, who cares I'm the Hokage they'll let it slide!" The older woman would reply with a playfully mischievous wink. At which point Sakura would sigh and promise that as soon as she came of age she would join properly join her Teacher in a celebratory drink.

Tsunade would whine for a little while longer in a way that was shameful for a woman of her true age. Before finally acquiescing, after making sure Sakura swore to uphold her end of the bargain.

Tsunade had not lived to see Sakura come of age, and Naruto had not lived long enough to come of age at all.

These two facts had brought Sakura to the mentors former desk where she knew the bottom left drawer held a fairly pricey bottle of sake Tsunade had been saving for a special occasion.

Sakura didn't think she would mind her using it on a rainy day.

Kakashi had come to her door to escort her to the funeral only to find a drunken mess. Her make up was smeared, hair mussed and she stunk of alcohol.

He said nothing and walked right by her side without missing a beat while she stumbled along visibly intoxicated right along with him.

She wondered if he had been embarrassed by her behaviour that day. He hadn't mentioned as such but she recalled vaguely that any rational personal would be well with reason to have been. The ceremony itself was a formal private affair prior to the grand ceremony open to the public. It was mostly attended by various Fire country officials and Senior council members.

Every one was politely reserved and twittered soft wishes of condolences to another. Keeping up pretences of sincere melancholy to suit the sombre tone of the event. Most had barley even known the woman and Sakura digressed if some of them had the would not like her.

Sakura had no business being amongst these people. Her and Kakashi's invitation was surely nothing more than a formality pandering to social graces. She had attended the event solely because she did not think she was capable of bringing herself to attend the grand spectacle of a funeral made to appease the general public. However she refused to be entirely absent in the collective mourning of a woman as formidable as Tsunade. She had hoped the private funeral would be brief and tasteful however she was sorely displeased to find it utilized as a spectacle all the same. The obnoxiousness of it all was christened by a gaudy statue gifted to the council of elders by a rich Lord, seeking to gain favour.

After interrupting an affronted looking Elder's ode to Tsunade's heroic sacrifice with a snide remark. She had then proceed to walk up to the delicately carved monument that was meant to honour Tsunades memory and serve as her final resting place.

The statue was comprised soft featured women draped in the conservative traditional garments of ancient healers.

One arm appeared to be extending outwards as if reaching for something only its stone eyes were able to see while the other was pressed demurely into the front of her chest.

Approaching the statue Sakura could not tare her gaze from the stone face of the woman. She had been carved with a gentle smile and a kind expression but Sakura this is not what held her attention.

There, fastened to the statues forehead was a small blue sapphire in the shape of a diamond.

Even had she not been blindingly drunk, if not for that tiny gem embedded upon the statues brow she would have never guessed that the wispy ethereal woman carved from stone was in fact meant to be carved in her Masters image.

Tsunade did not have the delicate features frozen upon the hunk of rock. Her smile was rare and when it graced her features it resembled more of a cocky smirk than anything. Sakura was nearly entirely positive that her mentors hands had been incapable of appearing in the graceful manner the stone mason had artistically placed them.

Her manicured nails were most commonly seen bearing a clenched fist as they boorishly demolished anything in their path.

She had been an ill tempered drunk with a gambling problem who wouldn't be caught dead in the billowing robe adorning the random woman supposed to be baring her likeness.

Sakura swayed with uncoordinated movements and she twisted to acknowledge the crowd that appeared to being growing more visibly uncomfortable at witnessing Sakura's borderline shameful display of intoxication at her Masters funeral.

Through rosy cheeks and lidded eyes she attempted to raise a singular eyebrow at the crowd.

"Do any of you reaaaaaallly think this looks anything like her?"

An awkward tension filled the air as no one made a sound. The faces of her unwilling audience ranged from pity to contempt as they regarded her. All however seemed unbearably uncomfortable at seeing the normally sweet, reserved girl unleash an obnoxious brutish tirade only her closest friends were familiar.

Still no one said a word.

She found her eyeline drawn to where she knew Kakashi was sitting quietly appearing to be the only one unperturbed by her behaviour. She had initially thought he might attempt to stop her from embarrassing herself in such a crude fashion but it appeared he was content to let her do as she saw fit. Turning back to the statue she gave a loud unladylike snort.

"This thing is fucking ridiculous." She scoffed looking over the offending rock once more. To the unbiased observer the statue was admittedly remarkably well crafted, but Sakura found the thing to be only tacky and gaudy. The statue was artificially pretty, too pretty to represent any mortal human being. It was fake like the people who had fawned over the deceased woman it represented.

Her cussing had appeared to signal the end of leniency from the Elder who had speaking moments prior.

She had actually been genuinely surprised the pious man had let her carry on for as long as she had.

Although as he marched towards gripping her arm in an attempt to lead the tiny girl off of the stage.

He had jerked in an almost comedic fashion when he suddenly felt resistance to his grip. He began to pull harder but the petite boozer didn't budge an inch.

Sakura was ever bit her Masters prodigy and if she did not want to be moved it would take at least a hundred elephants to force her to do otherwise.

Temper flaring at being bested by the small girl punitive stature as she further disrupted the formal ceremonies. Sakura had surrendered herself to the hazy buzz of the alcohol by that point and the angry rouge encompassing the livid man only amused her further.

"This is enough! You are making a mockery of the sacrifice your Master made to this village! Her death was an honourable one and you disgrace it with your imputative behaviour!"

At he mans words Sakura felt all traces of amusement leave her and her expression suddenly became stoney.

The mans words held a bitter irony for Sakura, because for the first time in her life she found herself disgusted with the place she called home. The only mockery evident to her was the precedence her village held for formalities and appearances. Her mentors mourning was like a performance of show boating for the rest of the world. Her sacrifice for her village was touted as an exemplary act of patriotism.

The rulers of Konoha and her other fellow funeral attendees, made face to express pity and grief over Tsunade's death. When in fact she was positive they revelled in it. What a shining example her death was for inspiring nationalism. Something to reference in their political agendas to appease civilians. Something to be taught to ninja as an archetype for heroism and loyalty.

'Look how this woman died for us' They all seemed to proudly hint when they mentioned the Sanin healer. "... Aren't we special here in Konoha?'

Loyalty to a village that now spat on her masters very existence with this warped representation of a mighty woman, who had cared nothing for the shallow politics they all wished to embed in her funeral.

In that moment a small part of Sakura understood the corruption Sasuke had been referring to. Konoha did not care if Tsunade died so it could live on, Konoha only cared that it survived above all else. Konoha was more important than any one individual residing within its walls, the council and the lordlings and other dignitaries understood that. It did not matter who died, so long as their death made the name of Konoha stronger.

"This statue is the only thing making a mockery of Tsunade." She hissed at the now nervous looking man. "Tsunade was not this flowery woman you seem determined to paint her as. Her death was not some glorified beacon of heroism, you've decided to call honour. And I promise you she did not die with 'bravery' in her heart."

Tsunade had not died in the name of Konoha. Perhaps the ethereal woman depicted in the statue wished to exist as a symbol of Konoha ninja's valour. However, Tsunade had not sacrificed herself to be a martyr for the villages sake.

The man appeared to grow increasingly concerned as the kunoichi only seemed to grow angrier.

"She died with unspeakable, blistering, agonizing, pain in her heart, as it was charred to a crisp and then regenerated over and over and over again."

Her voice began to break as she shouted towards the crowd collectively growing progressively paler by the minute and unable to meet the angry green eyes that were riddled with sheer anguish as she spoke of her mentors 'honourable death'. She had describe the sensation best to Kakashi the following night after he had tucked her slovenly form into her bed. Still not saying a word as she told him of the gruesome details he more than likely would have preferred not to know of. She told the tired man at her beside it was akin to being endlessly burned alive only your nerve endings never deteriorate, and you never lose consciousness. Every second is just as fresh and as painful as the last.

Tsunade had died to protect people. The individuals of Konoha and every other village outside of it. Sakura would not let anyone claim other wise.

"There is no such thing as an honourable death. There is only death and I assure you that should you ever witness it first hand you will find nothing honourable about it. My mentors sacrifice was horrific and she suffered through every second of her final moments. She endured the pain of that sacrifice because she was an honourable woman who lead an honourable life. And this.." She continued gesturing to the statue that had sparked her ire initially.

Fuck their honour in death. Tsunade dedicated her life to people. To the individuals that the shouldered the name of Konoha and ninja. Tsunade had lived with honour and had died in pain protecting people, not a village's ego.

Perhaps this statue was it's way of spurning her lack of reverence. It would shape her to be a fitting paradigm for its image in her death, where it could not in life. This statue was an illustration of what Konoha wanted Tsunade to be. Subservient. Docile.

As a Hokage Tsunade had never asked for anyone for their blind devotion. She never asked for anything in the name of Konoha. The fifth Hokage defined herself through her conduct. She let her actions inspire whom it may, and damn the rest. Her leadership was a reflection of her own morals and values, not Konoha's. Sakura and her comrades did not follow the councils vision for Konoha. They fought for the woman who had proven herself to them time and again, earning their trust and respect.

This statue did not resemble that woman. She owed this hunk of rock nothing.

"I don't know who you think this willowy bitch is..." Sakura began with a disputed sneer reaching up to place her finger upon the sparkling gem at the stone faces centre. "But I know that she has not sacrificed nearly enough to be worthy of baring my Masters mark." With that she flicked her finger against the jewel promptly dislodging it along with a sizeable chunk of rock surrounding it. The statue looked unnervingly strange with its pristine craftsmanship marred by a sizeable chunk missing from its disfigured forehead.

What was left of the stone womans face, was frozen in a genial smile even after Sakura's abuse. It only reaffirmed her conclusion that this woman pictured was a puppet of Konoha. Not it's leader.

The crowd remained rigid and wide eyed in there seats at the girls desecration of the statue. Even the furious elder appeared properly cowed by the destruction she caused with her pinky people had yet to move as if they were statues themselves and Sakura had found their petrified awe a prime note to end on.

She walked past them all with a head held high even as her knees wobbled from her earlier indulgence. Kakashi silently joined her as she walked away from where the ceremony was being held. Moments away from their exit, mercifully leaving the gobsmacked crowd to titter amongst one another desperately attempting to awkwardly brush off the inebriated woman's vicious scolding. In her drunken state Sakura decided to end her tirade on a rather vulgar note she knew Tsunade would have enjoyed.

Tossing her head to call over her shoulder with a signature slurring of words,

"Her tits were bigger too." She added as an concluding criticism of the pitifully inadequate sculpture, before continuing along her exit beside her now sole remaining mentor.

Giving her head a light pat as they walked away from the disaster Sakura had left in her wake, Kakashi let his lips twitch beneath his mask at his drunk students crass remark. It was the most palpable of expressions akin to anything joyful he had experienced in days. He expected that Sakura's unleashing of a torrent of verbal abuse upon the catty socialites provoked a similar feeling of release from being consumed by their shared misery.

The next morning Sakura had expected to be humiliated by her actions. Any rational person surely would have been at least slightly embarrassed of the booze fuelled display. However, she felt nothing of the sort. She felt no anxiousness of the undoubtably impending reprimand for her behaviour from the council. She felt no sense of pride she had managed to finally leave the sanctuary of her own bedroom to attend the funeral. In fact it was as though she had never left at all.

Being completely intoxicated had given her the gusto to scrounge what remaining will power she possessed to exit her dwelling. The burn of the alcohol as it went down and the burly weightlessness that followed masked her emotional numbness, it let her forget the all encompassing grief and pain that now practically made up the entirety of her existence. It had been a small moment away from her sorrow and she had enjoyed it. However, now Sakura was sober once more and found that nothing had changed in her alcohol riddled absence. The only thing different was the pounding headache and cottony feeling in her mouth. Tsunade was still dead. Naruto was still dead.

If Tsunade was defined by her actions, Naruto was defined by his spirit. A spirit he shared with everyone he came boy had a way of bringing out the best in others because he was so heartbreakingly good himself. He radiated pure light down to his very core. The world had tried to snuff out that light every chance it got but he had only burned brighter. He lived to protect the people in a village that had cruelly shunned him as a child. He had every reason to wallow in bitterness and anger, the cards fate had dealt him were a losing hand. Yet no matter how many times he lost Naruto got right back up. He fought endlessly with battered and bloodied fists, over and over again until he had succeeded in trampling whatever odds he had set out to conquer. The loud, cheerful, goofy ninja spread his resolve amongst those who had lost their own. He inspired those who had been cast off as a lost cause and pushed them to find there inner strength the same way he pushed himself, of every second of every moment. The young boy had had the power to change people for the better, no matter the circumstance. His enemies were merely people he had yet to save... And how he had so desperately wanted to save everyone...

For all his benevolence and unwavering desire to see the best in everyone, he had been naive. He did not seem capable of understanding that some people could not be saved.

It was one lesson he had never learned, until it was too late.

'...Baka...' Sakura had thought acidly when picturing the deceased boy wearing his signature goofy grin that seemed to take over his entire face. She stewed in bitterness as she cursed his idiocy in believing Sasuke could be saved. It was foolish for them to have thought he could be drawn out of darkness, and Naruto was the stupidest one of them all for attempting it.

'...Idiot...' A small selfish and angry part of her meant it too.

Although she digressed, calling him an idiot was a childish insult that had become more of an endearing nickname between them over time, and it only made it all sting more.

He was stupid because it had been impossible for anyone to save Sasuke. However, if anyone was stupid enough to try to make the impossible, possible it was him.

And if anyone actually had a shot in doing it... It was Naruto. He gave them all hope to conquer the odds because he seemed so sure he would succeed. It didn't matter how many times he failed.

He never stopped looking for the light at the end of the tunnel, even if no one else believed it was there.

Naruto never gave up, it was his best and worst quality. One could not determine wether or not he was foolish or admirable.

He had never been academically bright per say, but he was far from stupid. He possessed a wisdom that was far beyond his years. The sort of wisdom one could not learn by reading a book.

Sakura had once believed books were capable of encompassing everything one could possibly be able to learn.

She loved books.

The heavy weight of the countless words lying bound beneath the cover was a savoury burden in her arms. Feather light, wispy pages coming together to form something so incredibly solid was mesmerizing to Sakura.

Leather bound books were her favourite. The tanned hide stretched over the cover would grow warm in her hands as she read. Older books were best she had deemed. The more well worn the book, the softer the leather became. Ancient pages had this grainy feeling that was not entirely unpleasant against her finger tips, as she idly traced them along the columns of words she read.

However, in contrast the crackling sound accompanied when breaking in a newly unopened tome, bearing an unweathered and rigidly stiff spine, filled her with a rush of satisfaction that made her toes curl.

It didn't always have to be books, although she preferred them as she felt they had a certain classical character to them. However, scrolls, articles or really any text she could sap the knowledge from was adequate for Sakura. She loved them all.

It was an invigorating rush for her, when her mind began to fully understand a concept the book had outlined. It made her almost giddy to reach the beginning stages of comprehension and she rode that feeling until she mastered the knowledge. Her minds natural aptitude to retain knowledge had been a reliable tool in becoming a healer. Most pursuing a career in medicine often neglected to consider the sheer gargantuan amount of book learning and research required to become proficient in the beginning stages of developing the technique. Many dropped out. Most who stayed still despised the endless hours pouring over textbooks and other jargon. However, Sakura had revelled in it she enjoyed learning new things and developing her minds grasp of a new subject. Ever trying to expand her knowledge with every book she came across.

Her thirst for knowledge was now primarily driven by her chosen path as a healer. However, as an admittedly vain youth she originally revelled in the feeling of superiority that came with honing her already sharp intellect. Sakura had always been an noticeably bright girl, and most were under the assumption that her genius came to her naturally, like it had to Shikamaru. However they were sorely mistaken. Sakura put in countless hours of gruelling hard work in order to be brilliant. Every test in the academy had seen her hunched over a desk with her nose buried in a book. She would study for hours and hours on end, not fully satisfied until she had mastered every concept. It had used to drive her wild when the lazy boy who watched clouds all day bested her grade after she had spent so many hours agonizing over the material. She now cringed in embarrassment when she looked back on her know-it-all tendencies. With age, came maturity and she soon realized that her self indulgent need to be recognized simply for being academically gifted was a foolishly juvenile notion. Youth had made her ignorant to the realization that she had squandered her intelligence on her own arrogance. She flaunted her test scores like a status symbol, but genius meant nothing if it was not utilized for the betterment of others. Becoming a healer had allowed her to become something more than the silly little girl who touted being top of her class like a medal.

Prizes, awards, grades they were nothing except a boost for her inflated ego. The sense of accomplishment she had felt from recognition and self gratification could not even begin to encompass the feeling she got from healing others. Holding someones life in your hands was something she could not describe with mere words alone. It was simultaneously the best and worst sensation alive. The pale green energy emitting from her hands was their life line. She was the final combatant between them and the cold hands of death. With every patient she treated she did so with the fierceness of a warrior. She would use her hands to drag them as far out of reach from deaths grip as she could. The men and women who appeared on her operating table were her prizes. There was no greater accomplishment for her than seeing someone, who had arrived on the brink of death, walk out of her hospital to live. She had given them the gift of life. She had sent a husband home to his wife. A mother could watch her children grow into adults. A child would be home in time for the family dinner. During those times she loved every single thing about being a medic. The gruelling hours of reading giant text books, the chakra exhaustion it was all worth it to experience this feeling.

In those moments she could forget about what she _truly_ hated about being a medic. With such soaring highs came the most tremulous of lows.

Sometimes death would not relinquish its grip. Sometimes the soft glow of her hands were not enough to fend off the darkness. Sakura had never truly hated anything about what she did working as a healer, until she felt a mans heart stop beating in her palm. Her first one had been when she was fifteen. To this day she could remember every detail of his face. His name was Toshi Namura, he was 68 years old and had been married to his wife Yuue for 46 years. He had died 3 days before it was to be 47. Toshi was her first but she remembered all their names. Yuki, Jin, Tetsu, Hiroshi, Amee. She remembered every single one. She had mourned them all and begged for forgiveness that she had not been able to save them, and with every new patient she made a promise to them that she would work harder than she had the previous day to save this new life as a penance for when she had not been strong enough to save theirs.

It never got any easier, losing a patient. Every healer had a different way of dealing with it. Tsunade drank, Shizune would be bedridden over the next few days, Sakura however would read. She would march from the hospital straight to the library and read and re-read ever medical tome in the building. She would search frantically through the worn pages searching for an answer that would explain what she had done wrong. Why she had not been able to save them. She would analyze every possible way she could have stopped them from dying down to the most minute detail. And if her books could not give her an answer she created one. She experimented with new techniques trying things no one had yet attempted before. Most of her innovational methods an techniques usual turned out to be a bust. Yet, the few rare times she managed to lay the foundations for something truly achievable had been enough to negate every botched jutsu and drive her to constantly continue searching for answers.

Although arguably productive she had a tendency to work herself into an unhealthy obsessive spiral. After a few days the signs of her neglect for food and rest usually started to show. Around this point Naruto had showed up to coax her away from the musty books. Enticing her with offers of ramen and other goodies he knew she liked, that made her stomach rumble. If that failed however he would resort to annoying her until work became impossible. His favourite method was telling her the dirtiest jokes he knew and seeing which ones she would laugh at.

Although down right irritating and incredibly distracting, his means of getting her to exit the library were much preferred over Tsunade's. Her method mainly consisted of a tough love approach. It usually manifested itself in a solid yank on her shirt collar that then dragged her out of the library non too gently. This was then followed by a threat of being _thrown_ out next time, and ended with an invitation for a much needed training session to work of some of her stress.

Tsunade had never followed through with her promise to actually throw her out of the building, however she still was more inclined to favour Naruto's gentle prodding to join him for a meal and ridiculous jokes. It was down right impossible not to crack a smile sometimes and she usually caved well into the progression of his rudest bits. On their way to get ramen he had teased her relentlessly when she finally broke and ended up in hysterics after he had told, what she still considered to be the most vulgar and offensive joke, ever created. The librarian had promptly kicked them out for the ruckus and Naruto had playfully made a point to make a dramatic show of expressing his 'shock' at her sick sense of humour.

For the life of her she couldn't recall the joke itself. She wondered if she would still find it funny when he wasn't telling it.

She wondered who would drag her away from the library now.

Although perhaps no one would have to. Sakura had no inclinations to leave her apartment after the stint at Tsunade's funeral. Especially to attend another.

Through her throbbing migraine she had deduced that Naruto's funeral would soon follow after Tsunade's. The thought of what sort of pompous charade the village might produce to memorialize the boy made her cringe. There would undoubtably be a substantial crowd drawn to whatever spectacle they had planned for their war hero. She comforted herself with the notion that most in attendance would arguably be much more sincere than those at Tsunade's funeral.

The political elites making social niceties would be drowned by the sea of people Naruto had touched throughout his far too short life. However, that only meant a parade of faces that reflected her own grief back at her. Each one a living memory of her best friend while they all gathered around his dead corpse in a thought of it had felt more sickening than the nausea of her hangover.

He didn't belong in a box. She couldn't watch them bury him in a box, piling on mounds of dirt until all of his light was smothered beneath tightly packed soil where it could not escape. Her mind had conjured a horrifying image of a shoddy casket made of uneven planks. The wood was rotten and housed maggots that were slowly seeking out flesh to feast on. The twisted image of the casket she had created drove her into a hysterical panic and she couldn't bear the the possibility of seeing it become a reality.

In truth the casket had likely been beautifully crafted with care, perhaps even embellished with artistry signifying the importance of the person it housed. Still, seeing a lavish casket with her own eyes was an even more terrifying possibility than the demented vision her mind had concocted. Because it would be real, and it would make everything so painfully, unbearably real.

She knew she should have been there. People expected her to be there. Naruto would have expected her to be there.

Still she could not bring herself to do it. Seeing his face displayed in a picture above a dead body would end her. She did not have the strength to bare witness to a ceremony entered around the death of her best friend. She just couldn't. People would hate her for it and she hated herself for it. But she hated the thought of seeing that box more.

She contemplated indulging once more in liquid courage to see if it would help her summon the resolve to face that scene. However, she concluded it would not make what was in that box any less real. Naruto would still be dead, and Sakura didn't feel like drinking. She didn't feel like doing anything. Her bedroom was her box and she would not leave it unless he did too.

She recalled the day of his funeral she had spent wrapped beneath her blanket covers. Tears streamed in rivulets down her face never seeming to stop, even when her swollen eyes began to burn and cheeks grew itchy and irritated. She had felt physically ill to a point of retching periodically, although most resulted in her dry heaving after she had expelled the entire contents of her stomach. The nausea was nothing compared to the self loathing however. She hated herself for not going to his funeral, but did not regret her choice. She did not want to live with the last memory of him as a box. She inherently believed that Naruto couldn't be fit into something as basic as a box, and to this day she had seen nothing that had told her otherwise.

Presently seated across from a twitchy Jin fiddling with his cufflinks, she idly wondered what her box would look like. She couldn't imagine Jin going through much trouble. Perhaps he would simply toss her into a ditch and let nature run its course as she decayed.

She certainly wouldn't expect much more from the man constantly attempting to orchestrate her mental downfall.

"You know, interrogation is all about leverage." Jin said suddenly breaking her train of thought.


End file.
